Learning from the experiences of BBF.com

[mook]

I'm having a pretty interesting conversation with Krstic over at the old board:
http://www.basketballforum.com/portland-off-topic-forum/411271-links-other-boards-2.html#post5693833

I'm already sold that the folks who run this site are really bending over backwards (during the honeymoon period, at least!) to accommodate us, and I really appreciate it. And it's good business for them.

I'm really curious as to how the owners (and my fellow posters here) view my comments. I don't expect the owners to comment on the other board--it'd be bad taste and bad for business. I'm more curious as to whether they see it the same way as I do (doubtful), like BBF does (also fairly doubtful) or in some third way.

Would it make sense to brand this board as "BlazersBoard.com (or whatever), a SportsTwo.com community." ?

Would it make sense to eventually split out multiple OT forums if it could grow that way? If, for example, Minstrel started a new forum like he used to have, should it go under SportsTwo or in here as another OT?

Would you buy a baseball cap that said "BlazersBoard.com" (or whatever) on it?

I'm not interested in complaining about the old site in this thread. I'm more curious about if such a re-branding is both feasible and desirable, from both the community and the ownership's perspective.

 

[Денг Гордон]

For the record, even though in the first post of that thread, it says you are allowed to have links to other sites in your signature. That is not the case over there. I was first asked to remove a link from my signature from a niche sports site, aka not the same type of site as bbf. Secondly, I was asked to remove a link from my signature linking to a completely non-sports site. Well not asked to, they removed it from me while telling me in their pm's to remove it. Basel says not for CM's to decide, but a CM decided on that for me, because he had a personal vendetta against me (see him trolling me to PSD).

 

[Денг Гордон]

Someone should bring up that post and ehmunro and Naked Circus. I had no problem with him linking his site, and found quite a bit of that site pretty damn funny. But there shouldn't be a half standard for Moderators and Community Moderators when it comes to following the rules. I was also told by ehmunro, what the rules that Basel is spouting off in that thread in regards to links is not the rule. (and again, I never had any problem with ehmunro's posting).

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

what happened at bbf.com? full story please!

 

[julius]

don't the blazers have a blazer owned site? Or do I misunderstand your question about sponsorship?

 

[Denny Crane]

I'm having a pretty interesting conversation with Krstic over at the old board:
http://www.basketballforum.com/portland-off-topic-forum/411271-links-other-boards-2.html#post5693833

I'm already sold that the folks who run this site are really bending over backwards (during the honeymoon period, at least!) to accommodate us, and I really appreciate it. And it's good business for them.

I'm really curious as to how the owners (and my fellow posters here) view my comments. I don't expect the owners to comment on the other board--it'd be bad taste and bad for business. I'm more curious as to whether they see it the same way as I do (doubtful), like BBF does (also fairly doubtful) or in some third way.

Would it make sense to brand this board as "BlazersBoard.com (or whatever), a SportsTwo.com community." ?

Would it make sense to eventually split out multiple OT forums if it could grow that way? If, for example, Minstrel started a new forum like he used to have, should it go under SportsTwo or in here as another OT?

Would you buy a baseball cap that said "BlazersBoard.com" (or whatever) on it?

I'm not interested in complaining about the old site in this thread. I'm more curious about if such a re-branding is both feasible and desirable, from both the community and the ownership's perspective.

For starters, I don't believe that this is some honeymoon period. What you've seen from us is what you're going to get from us as long as we are around. We really think we're onto something with the Radical Trust thing, and frankly, I don't see the point in putting in a lot of hard work and time to build an amusement park (pardon my metaphor) and not let people ride the rides. I mean, it's your playground, not mine, not the staff's...

The "Two" in our name is inspired by the "2" in Web 2.0. It's hard to explain without going into a dissertation, but it's basically a philosophy that hugely favors user created content and empowers the users as fully as possible. We embrace this concept and see it as the present and future of the Internet and WWW sites in general.

The Web 1.0 generation is about owning users and controlling their actions, worrying about giving links out to other sites because you lose page views, etc. It's not unusual, but it's just not my thing or what S2 is about.

We're really working with what this vB3 software provides and we've added Drupal to it so there's even more fun rides at our amusement park. We're doing everything we can within the confines of what the software functions do, to promote the Web 2.0 spirit. As admin, I don't want to be the constant decision maker, I want to be the facilitator. I want people to tell me what they need, and I'll do what I can to make it happen. This is basically what we ask of all the staff, in terms of their role in the community - help the posters do what they want to do.

So you ask about branding the board. Not opposed to it, not for it. I'd need to think about all the technical issues involved. I don't think we want S2 to become a network of sports sites or sports team fan sites - something I'm sure you've seen elsewhere. Single signon to access everything is a technical thing I see as important, and I hope everyone who understands what I mean agrees. Changing the banner at the top and the forum colors and that kind of thing, even as a form of branding, is entirely possible and I see no issues with it.

You ask about adding more subforums. Not an issue. I have a long time relationship with Minstrel and am a huge fan of his. I already PMed him and asked if he wanted his own subforum in the Blazers section of the site. The offer stands. Give me good ideas like this! I want to see them happen. Same for your other subforum ideas. If the rest of the people in the forum want the subforums, why wouldn't we make them? Seems like a silly question

My hope is that everyone will settle in and get used to the vB3 part of the site, and then branch out and explore the Drupal side of things. We could offer personal forums, but Drupal provides even better features that ultimatley blow forums out of the water. Even the simplest concept of everyone getting their own blog via Drupal is roughly the same as a personal forum. More rides for the amusement park

I want to address one other thing I read in that thread you linked to. Freedom of speech. I know KAS quite well, and he's a very good guy in person. He's making a perfectly valid point in lawyerspeak. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to private ventures like a message board. That said, you can shop around and I seriously doubt you're going to find one with rules that are as pro free speech as ours are. We consider ourselves an OPEN and free site.

 

[mook]

don't the blazers have a blazer owned site? Or do I misunderstand your question about sponsorship?

Yes they do.

I guess what I'm envisioning is something like BlazersEdge.com, except it's focused on a bulletin board (and the graphic design is more professional looking). TwoSports would own the board, but it'd be branded as a separate but related identity.

 

[Reep]

Would it make sense to brand this board as "BlazersBoard.com (or whatever), a SportsTwo.com community." ?

It could look a lot like the NBA.com sites, where each team's is different, but they have a common link (sportstwo?). The benefit would be that it could become recognized as the primary site, but could also draw a pretty big crowd. Many other forum sites have such forum t-shirts and hats so they can see each other at games, etc. I could imagine a nice business model coming out of this, as long as you don't screw up the customer service side like BBF is doing.

You would have to be careful about working with/around the issues around the "Blazer" trademark with the team and NBA. That in itself could make it too big a problem to overcome.

 

[julius]

Yes they do.

I guess what I'm envisioning is something like BlazersEdge.com, except it's focused on a bulletin board (and the graphic design is more professional looking). TwoSports would own the board, but it'd be branded as a separate but related identity.

it does sound like a cool idea. Maybe someone could come up with a web address that could be part of the board, but not part of the board.

So when you type in "www.blazerfans.com" or something, it links to this site. It'd be easier than repeating the address by name. Too many back-slashes for my liking!

 

[Denny Crane]

it does sound like a cool idea. Maybe someone could come up with a web address that could be part of the board, but not part of the board.

So when you type in "www.blazerfans.com" or something, it links to this site. It'd be easier than repeating the address by name. Too many back-slashes for my liking!

Browser bookmarks, my friend. You'll only have to type a URL once.

 

[julius]

Browser bookmarks, my friend. You'll only have to type a URL once.

I meant if you were trying to tell someone out in public where you post at.

it's why you can type "blazers.com" and get to the blazers website http://www.nba.com/blazers/

which is easier to tell someone to go to? "Yah, I post at forward-slash forward slash sportstwo...no, sports TWO, not the number 2. anyway, sportstwo dot com forward slash no, you don't need a www. As I was saying, sportstwo dot com forward slash forums forward slash forumdisplay (one word) dot php question mark f equals one hundred and twenty three"

or "blazerfans.com"?

 

[Denny Crane]

It could look a lot like the NBA.com sites, where each team's is different, but they have a common link (sportstwo?). The benefit would be that it could become recognized as the primary site, but could also draw a pretty big crowd. Many other forum sites have such forum t-shirts and hats so they can see each other at games, etc. I could imagine a nice business model coming out of this, as long as you don't screw up the customer service side like BBF is doing.

You would have to be careful about working with/around the issues around the "Blazer" trademark with the team and NBA. That in itself could make it too big a problem to overcome.

Putting the blazers logo on a fan site doesn't offend the league, but putting it on something that's sold is going to cost a hefty license fee.

 

[Denny Crane]

I meant if you were trying to tell someone out in public where you post at.

it's why you can type "blazers.com" and get to the blazers website http://www.nba.com/blazers/

which is easier to tell someone to go to? "Yah, I post at forward-slash forward slash sportstwo...no, sports TWO, not the number 2. anyway, sportstwo dot com forward slash no, you don't need a www. As I was saying, sportstwo dot com forward slash forums forward slash forumdisplay (one word) dot php question mark f equals one hundred and twenty three"

or "blazerfans.com"?

http://sportstwo.com

See this work in progress:

http://sportstwo.com/NBA/Chicago

Needs skinning, but it's the kind of thing we can get going with Drupal.

 

[mook]

For starters, I don't believe that this is some honeymoon period. What you've seen from us is what you're going to get from us as long as we are around.

I appreciate that, and I didn't want to offend by using the term "honeymoon." It's just that, having run my own business, I notice we all tend to treat the newest customers best. Just human nature.

We really think we're onto something with the Radical Trust thing, and frankly, I don't see the point in putting in a lot of hard work and time to build an amusement park (pardon my metaphor) and not let people ride the rides. I mean, it's your playground, not mine, not the staff's...

The "Two" in our name is inspired by the "2" in Web 2.0. It's hard to explain without going into a dissertation, but it's basically a philosophy that hugely favors user created content and empowers the users as fully as possible. We embrace this concept and see it as the present and future of the Internet and WWW sites in general.

The Web 1.0 generation is about owning users and controlling their actions, worrying about giving links out to other sites because you lose page views, etc. It's not unusual, but it's just not my thing or what S2 is about.

We're really working with what this vB3 software provides and we've added Drupal to it so there's even more fun rides at our amusement park. We're doing everything we can within the confines of what the software functions do, to promote the Web 2.0 spirit. As admin, I don't want to be the constant decision maker, I want to be the facilitator. I want people to tell me what they need, and I'll do what I can to make it happen. This is basically what we ask of all the staff, in terms of their role in the community - help the posters do what they want to do.

I really like this philosophy.

So you ask about branding the board. Not opposed to it, not for it. I'd need to think about all the technical issues involved. I don't think we want S2 to become a network of sports sites or sports team fan sites - something I'm sure you've seen elsewhere. Single signon to access everything is a technical thing I see as important, and I hope everyone who understands what I mean agrees. Changing the banner at the top and the forum colors and that kind of thing, even as a form of branding, is entirely possible and I see no issues with it.

I've got no problem with single signon. Definitely makes things more user-friendly. I just think that overriding domain names are going to become less and less important. Nobody cares about Johnson & Johnson, but everybody can use one of their Bandaids.

Similarly, I don't think most posters will ever feel a strong allegiance to SportsTwo.com. (Sorry!) They feel allegiance to their team, their favorite posters and that localized community. If you brand that localized community under your own site with a new name, suddenly you are allowing them to invest good will in your products. It becomes a little harder to "follow the herd" in the next bulletin board migration, because part of their identity is wrapped up in the logo and the domain name.

People mostly didn't buy Air Jordans because they liked the Taiwanese shoe plant or the engineers at Nike. They wanted to Be Like Mike. As great as SportsTwo appears to be, it really can't go beyond being Johnson & Johnson or a combination of shoe plant/engineer.

Forcing me to type in SportsTwo.com and then browsing to the Blazers board is like telling somebody in a grocery store to go to the Johnson & Johnson section to get a BandAid. It just doesn't logically follow.
Maybe just buy up all the domain names for the teams with the word "Two" after it. You'd have BlazersTwo.com, for example. I'd like to be able to tell my friends to check out BlazersTwo.com. It's a lot easier than telling them to go to SportsTwo.com and then go find the Blazer board.

Anyway, I'm a marketing guy by trade, so I think about this crap probably a lot more than I should. I appreciate you taking the time to chat about this.

 

[julius]

http://sportstwo.com

See this work in progress:

http://sportstwo.com/NBA/Chicago

Needs skinning, but it's the kind of thing we can get going with Drupal.

cool. you have my approval.

 

[mook]

Putting the blazers logo on a fan site doesn't offend the league, but putting it on something that's sold is going to cost a hefty license fee.

That's true. You could evade this entire issue by not using the team name at all. Just nicknames. Portland's could be "RipCityTwo.com" or something like that.

 

[Jurassic]

No offense, but how many threads do there need to be about how much the other site sucks?

 

[Minstrel]

The "Two" in our name is inspired by the "2" in Web 2.0. It's hard to explain without going into a dissertation, but it's basically a philosophy that hugely favors user created content and empowers the users as fully as possible. We embrace this concept and see it as the present and future of the Internet and WWW sites in general.

The Web 1.0 generation is about owning users and controlling their actions, worrying about giving links out to other sites because you lose page views, etc. It's not unusual, but it's just not my thing or what S2 is about.

We're really working with what this vB3 software provides and we've added Drupal to it so there's even more fun rides at our amusement park. We're doing everything we can within the confines of what the software functions do, to promote the Web 2.0 spirit. As admin, I don't want to be the constant decision maker, I want to be the facilitator. I want people to tell me what they need, and I'll do what I can to make it happen. This is basically what we ask of all the staff, in terms of their role in the community - help the posters do what they want to do.

This is a great philosophy. Web 2.0 was really what discussion forums and early blogs tried to do crudely...allow dynamic, user-generated content. It's really the promise of the Internet...a big dynamic fluid interaction of content from everyone and anyone. Obviously, the entire Internet isn't going to connect together like that, but the more individual sites create that fluid, user-driven atmosphere, the better.

 

[pegs]

No offense, but how many threads do there need to be about how much the other site sucks?

Just as many threads as we had in the Nets forum for the draft

 

[Jurassic]

Just as many threads as we had in the Nets forum for the draft

 

[mook]

I meant if you were trying to tell someone out in public where you post at.

it's why you can type "blazers.com" and get to the blazers website http://www.nba.com/blazers/

which is easier to tell someone to go to? "Yah, I post at forward-slash forward slash sportstwo...no, sports TWO, not the number 2. anyway, sportstwo dot com forward slash no, you don't need a www. As I was saying, sportstwo dot com forward slash forums forward slash forumdisplay (one word) dot php question mark f equals one hundred and twenty three"

or "blazerfans.com"?

You totally get half of what I'm saying.

The other half is that there's a psychological attachment users can easily make with The Blazers. There really isn't one with The NBA.

Some people really do think, "I love the NBA" (just like the old slogan). But I'd bet there are far, far more people who think, "I love the Blazers."

The NBA is too diverse, too spread out over too many cities with too many competing teams for an emotional attachment to form. The Blazers, however, are nicely confined to one city, 15 players and one coach, and of course the history of the franchise.

SportsTwo will always have the same problem (just like Basketballforum did). By its nature, it has to please too many people to be effective at fostering strong brand attachment. It could fight this, or it could shrug and make something fans could become attached to.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

someone just register a domain name, have it auto forward to this forum. 10 bucks a year at godaddy...cheaper elsewhere. big whoop.

 

[mook]

No offense, but how many threads do there need to be about how much the other site sucks?

It's called catharsis.

 

[Jurassic]

It's called catharsis.

Yeah that's understandable, but to a certain extent it could be confined to one thread.

Over just the past couple days I have seen "BBF.com is a joke", "Learning from BBF.com", and "I've been banned from BFF!" If I didn't know better I'd say this is all a covert operation to promote them.

 

[#1_War_Poet_ForLife]

http://sportstwo.com/MLB

What Pegs and I put together in a matter of hours (many of which were dedicated to learning about drupal/pestering Denny).

The idea of mlbtwo.com and netstwo.com and blazers.com sounds very cool.

 

[Sam Bowie's Leg]

What's BBF?

 

[julius]

What's BBF?

best bud forever?

 

[Denny Crane]

I appreciate that, and I didn't want to offend by using the term "honeymoon." It's just that, having run my own business, I notice we all tend to treat the newest customers best. Just human nature.



I really like this philosophy.



I've got no problem with single signon. Definitely makes things more user-friendly. I just think that overriding domain names are going to become less and less important. Nobody cares about Johnson & Johnson, but everybody can use one of their Bandaids.

Similarly, I don't think most posters will ever feel a strong allegiance to SportsTwo.com. (Sorry!) They feel allegiance to their team, their favorite posters and that localized community. If you brand that localized community under your own site with a new name, suddenly you are allowing them to invest good will in your products. It becomes a little harder to "follow the herd" in the next bulletin board migration, because part of their identity is wrapped up in the logo and the domain name.

People mostly didn't buy Air Jordans because they liked the Taiwanese shoe plant or the engineers at Nike. They wanted to Be Like Mike. As great as SportsTwo appears to be, it really can't go beyond being Johnson & Johnson or a combination of shoe plant/engineer.

Forcing me to type in SportsTwo.com and then browsing to the Blazers board is like telling somebody in a grocery store to go to the Johnson & Johnson section to get a BandAid. It just doesn't logically follow.
Maybe just buy up all the domain names for the teams with the word "Two" after it. You'd have BlazersTwo.com, for example. I'd like to be able to tell my friends to check out BlazersTwo.com. It's a lot easier than telling them to go to SportsTwo.com and then go find the Blazer board.

Anyway, I'm a marketing guy by trade, so I think about this crap probably a lot more than I should. I appreciate you taking the time to chat about this.

I kinda ramble here:

The technical issue with single signon is the cookies, cross domain security issues implemented by the browsers, and quite a few other similar things. People don't expect multiple different hosts/domains to belong to the same domain as far as the technology goes. I personally don't like the idea of having to sign in to the Blazers board to post, then go sign in to the Nets board to post, then go sign in to the Bulls board to post, and so on. That's a cookie problem. Javascript also has similar issues, which ties our hands with what we can do going forward.

And like I said, I don't see the value in running a network of independant sites like you've seen elsewhere.

It seems to me there's another site people are talking about on this site as if it has a brand (which it does). We do think there's value to the S2 brand currently, and in the long run. In your analogy, S2 is the supermarket proper - you do tell people to go to Albertsons or Safeway to get their band aids.

What is possible is something like blazers.sportstwo.com, and that's an issue that I would want to address for the entire site, not just this one forum. It's just an economy of my time and labor issue.

Customer care is what it is. It's almost our whole business model. If we lose sight of it, we're nothing.

 

[Денг Гордон]

Denny, do you think you could integrate S2 with my wordpress site? Basically, I would castrate all non-wordpress elements of my site off, and keep the blog at the current domain, while making the forums the S2 Bulls forum, while integrating the userbases? Two separate entities still basically, that are in a symbiotic and combined (shared userbase) relationship.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

Denny,

Can you make me a myspace background for S2? LOLZ OMG!