Why would vB want to ...

...run off people running "hobby" or non-professional sites? Aren't they paying customers just like the big shots who want to use vB?

 

Yep we are.

Collateral damage?

 

I don't get it either. Anyways, even at the beginning, paying $180 is a lot for a 'hobby'.

 

It's all about spending power and cost to maintain.

Hobby board owners tend to use the most resources in needing support, and they also pay the lowest amounts of money. They are the least likely to be interested in any of the high end products that IB want to release, and the profitability of such customers is neglible. Therefore they want to price them off the platform and replace them with enterprise users, who tend to have deeper pockets and need less support.

Charging for tivket support is just more evidence of this.

 

Depends on the hobby.

Think how much coin collectors, or stamp collectors spend, or even people who collect baseball cards & comics.

 

So in basic terms they're trying to become the Bentley of forums.

 

I agree with you. It's just plain business sense.

+1

In addition, if such hobby sites do bring in revenue.

 

I'm going to go out on a guess here, but I'd say they want less of the hobbyist customers due to the monetary payment difference between the standard board owner and some enterprise forum owner. Support wise/demands... that's already been killed by charging for support, and that there's no real difference between the level of support needed for a board of a different size... some hobbyists don't know anything about forums, and need pretty much complete guidance on everything, and quite a few big board owners need a similar amount of assistance due to having to use dedicated servers and such like, which need to set up/managed correctly, and with the problems of getting a forum software script to work on a larger scale.

I hope they're not intending at marketing to the Jive/Lithium crowd though... those forums do pretty poorly in terms of sales quantity for a reason.

 

I honestly don't think they have a cohesive plan. Much of what is happening makes no sense.

I think there are a huge number of good people with good intentions trying to make things as good as they can be, and others as well. I really don't think there is a plan for what is best for vB. At least I've not seen it.

I am crossing my fingers, hoping for the best, and hope they do well. At the same time I hope someone could capitalize on this business opportunity to take the best parts of vb & ipb and create another paid, and supported, alternative. Times are not good right now and these types of opportunities don't happen often.

 

If you weren't going to keep the company for say, more than a year or so, it wouldn't matter what customers you run off because you'd make a shitload of money and wouldn't have to deal with the long term problems the cash grab business plan creates.

I guess that doesn't add up though... it's not like they rushed a product out the door with incomplete feature list, jacked up the price, lost all the core developers along the way, or put the product on sale without even so much as a screenshot to prove it exists. That's the type of thing a company crawling out of it's skin to make money would do... not our beloved IB.

 

Ya know I read this part and immediately thought to myself the bold part word for word :lol:

It's not a $ thing, although I'm sure that is important, it's not just Bob B speaking at Pub Con next month although that is what is driving the scheduling issues. It could be a warped type of management motivation tool - use something as an excuse for a hard deadline (pub con) & end of quarter, so the 'pre-sale' concept was introduced. Customers scream loudly, the engineers empathize and management uses the screaming people as an excuse to get the engineers and support staff to work 120 hour weeks.

Reputation of the company be damned, full speed ahead. Oh and by the way next version v4.1 will need to be accomplished much faster than v4.0 so get used to the 100+ work weeks.


All the while Bob B gets to tell the world record number of copies were purchased under his leadership. While the $ is important, my hunch is simply appearing to be doing well is what really drives him.

I'm sure the stock holders won't complain with added income of the company. Beyond that they could be offsetting some other loss somewhere else in the IB menagerie. Don't know. But it will be interesting reading the quarterly report.


It will also be interesting in Vegas, it is not that far from me, I still may go to that.

 

Granted, the ones they do have (Linksys, Nintendo, Sony Playstation, T-Mobile, Borders, AT&T, etc) are companies with some relatively large wallets, you're correct that not many people can even look at the quotes given without having a seizure. I'm truly hoping that IB isn't trying to go that way completely. Now, a lower-end "hobbyist" version and a higher-end "enterprise" version would be a really thoughtful and useful strategy, but I really don't think that's what they're reaching for here.

Bottom line, they want as much money as they can get, no matter what happens to the loyal customers. If the loyal customers keep buying, they're happy. If they don't, it's not the end of the world to them. Unless, of course, there is a mass migration to another software and constantly relentless bashing of the company across the web.

 

Oh definitely, but I think appearing to be doing well to investors is what he is going for... and the only way to do that is with $$$$$. Investors aren't going to see the what they did to the customers/company in order to make the money.

 

While money is nice, I really don't think that is what drives Bob B. I'd like to meet him in person at some point.

The picture on the corporate web site reminds me a bit of this guy:







But like I said, I've not met him.

 

I do not understand your question??

 

And 9 other people did....? Lol woa.

He's asking why are people speculating that vB wants to eliminate the hobby forums but keep those business forum. His question means that aren't the people who buy vB people with a lot of money?

 

Yeah, what she said.

Many people were saying it appeared that vB was wanting to craft an image of "serious" forum owners only. And to push out the hobbyist. Made no sense to me. Their $$ was still $$.

 

I keep seeing this. Internet Brand's third quarter ended on September 30th. Their board of directors meeting is today. Neither of these really have an effect on the timing of the presale. The first occured before end of quarter and the latter before presales ramifications can be tallied. As it is, Internet Brands makes less than 10% of their annual income from vBulletin at this time. Their big sites (carsdirect.com, loans.com, etc...) are what people are going to be looking at.

Pubcon will be a good marketing tool. vBulletin was presented at two tradeshows in the past under the Jelsoft name (before the buyout) but the leads were never followed up on so in the long run they were wasted time. We'll see how it goes this round.

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For hobbyists, we're really trying to give them the best value for their money. If you're on 3.8.X and have some months available, then great. Continue using it. We'll continue to support it until end of life, currently the release of 4.2 will signal that. If you had an owned license, you don't have to upgrade or spend any money. Wait until vBulletin 5.0 and upgrade then. The new FORUMS license is $15.00 more than the old license and does not require annual renewals. Ticket support is an additional cost but most people don't use it anyway. They use the forums, which still is available free of charge. Even leased license holders save money over time. Leasing has traditionally been the least cost effective method of running a forum and they often pay hundreds of dollars more than owned license owners for the same benefits. So old license with renewals for two years with predominantly forum support is $220-$240. New license is $195 for the same period.

When you start figuring out the cost of the Suite, the savings are even more. Purchasing Forums, Blogs and Project tools now is $300. If it had been sold separately the CMS would have easily cost $100, if not more. Suite is $285 which is $15.00 less than the previous value. It also doesn't have annual fees which would reduce the cost by $40-60 annually. Furthermore it has the added benefit of ticket support which for Forums over two years would be $160. With Suite you pay nothing.

I do understand people like a la cart methods of buying but what happens in the future if blog becomes a content type instead of a product? Blogs actually make more sense as a "Content type" instead of a separate application. Not much you do with them that is different than an article in a CMS. Same with Galleries. Galleries are content holders not a separate product. This is where I see the Suite going in the future. Hard to separate these things out in the long run.

Right now, it seems that you need to pay a lot of money if you're a hobbyist but you don't in reality unless you choose to upgrade. You like 3.8.X and don't plan on getting suite, then continue using 3.8.X. You'll save money. When a version comes out that you want to upgrade to, then upgrade to it. Really it is a transition to a more traditional software license and I think that is where people are confused.

Anyway, I commented on this thread more than I mean to so have a good day.

 

My forum is small potatoes and always will be since it is not something a lot of people want to join,thus it is never justifiable for me to spend $180 yearly for a forum software.

I already pay the server over $100 a year,and that is enough for me.

 

Where do you get $180.00 yearly? There are no yearly fees. You're purchasing a software package and you can continue using it until you decide to upgrade to the next version whether that is 2 years or 10 years down the road.