Verticalscope

I'd read about these guys before, and forgotten all about them until yesterday when it was announced that they bought a big forum I semi-frequent .

I've heard stories about how they buy forums and destroy them,  but as far as I know I've never been on one they've taken over.  Just as a matter of curiosity, anybody here have experiences?

We used to sponsor several forums they bought out. Normally they didn't let the forums get overrun by spammers (although that happened once or twice), but would sometimes change the rules enough to run off some of the regulars, and their own moderation staff didn't bring very much in the way of real passion for the subject. At best, the forum would continue on as it was before, but many of them went downhill.

We had a running joke that their real business model was to buy established forums, suck the life out of them, and sell that life to Hollywood stars who were afraid of aging.

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

This has been my experience as well. At best it continues as is. At worst, it all goes to E36 M3 and all the regulars leave.

VS bought MR2OC and is that the reason it faded so much or is it due to facebook?

I dont know. 

Some whine and complain about them, but Ive not PERSONALLY seen a big change when they took over. Only issue I see/have seen, is the BS that pops up from time to time from them in the forums. 

Example - stupid 'auto news' sections that start which is nothing more than a bot that looks for car brands, makes, or automotive key words in a news article and posts them up. I saw that on a Fiesta forum and a general Toyota board too. Waste of space and I hated hitting "New Posts" and seeing so many be that nonsense. 

NOW - something positive, and, honestly, the only positive Ive seen is something recent - on the MR2 board they did a section for holiday deals and posted a thread about 'anyone who posts a deal in this thread is entered to win $50 Amazon giftcard'

I won.  :) Actually it came in the email yesterday afternoon

So, overall - I dont really see a change. Some boards have had stupid features, some people get turned off by this and leave, but, ultimately, I havent seen a real change in a board due to them taking over. 

Oh, to add one more thing about folks leaving - I have seen a lot of people leave due to feelings hurt when the site was bought out. A feeling that the owner 'sold out' (well, they DID) and that it shouldve stayed in the hands of the excited fans on the site. 

Best way to ruin a small company of any sort whatsoever:  Have a big company buy them out.

Without sailing too far into forbidden waters, I would say that THE GREATEST failure of government has been allowing mega-corporations to achieve monopolies time and again, and that these same mega-corporations will be our ruin.  

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I don't always agree with you but

I was on Pirate4x4 since way back in the day...it was the best and I think biggest 4x4 site, had a no nonsense vibe (many people rightfully saw it as too mean :) )

Anyway VS bought them and one of the posters started Irate4x4.com (get it? they just took the P off) and took most if not all of the regulars. The P site goes weeks without posts in some of it's formally active forums.

(The regulars being greatly reduced in numbers over the years as forums have falled out of favor anyway.)

I don't know much about web history but this seems like one of the few wins for the little guy.

93EXCivic said:

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

At worst, it all goes to E36 M3 and all the regulars leave.

It would have been nice if that happened to vwvortex. If you aren't already a part of the regulars' group text/discord you're not welcome. 

iammclovin804 said:

93EXCivic said:

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

At worst, it all goes to E36 M3 and all the regulars leave.

It would have been nice if that happened to vwvortex. If you aren't already a part of the regulars' group text/discord you're not welcome. 

There's a certain Miata forum that could use a little of that. Well, at least when I visited there.

I joined the Subaru site back when I had a couple of WRX's. 

 Everything I posted was flamed.  Same thing happened to other recent joiners.  Some of the flamers were so bad that other flamers were calling them down for being to heavy on the flaming.   One guy appointed himself grand inquisitor of the site and every question someone asked was answered with some variation of "you are too stupid to own a turbo Subaru".

That's why I like this site.  Very little flaming, and when it does happen Marjorie removes the the post, and sometimes the offender, quickly.

It will be interesting to see what's going to happen. The forum is Thumpertalk. It can be a decent resource, simply because it's been around so long, but as a day to day forum, it's not great, and the signal to noise ratio is not favourable. I'll be interested to see how it affects the day to day operation. I don't think the people that frequent that forum will notice any difference, or care.

Actually those no nonsense  forums are my favourite.  I've found that the people that don't like that kind of stuff is precisely the people they usually want to keep out. It seems to work pretty well. I never have a difficult time fitting in ; )

Now, these mean posters, is that due to VS or due to mods just letting some jerks run wild?

ThumperTalk, to me, was always good. I just stopped going because I didnt care about modding/being enthusiastic about my KLX140L and I didnt post much/anything about my old (74) TS100

hybridmomentspass said:

VS bought MR2OC and is that the reason it faded so much or is it due to facebook?

I dont know. 

 Can't it be both?

I was a vendor on MR2OC, as was my employer (separately), when Verticalscope bought the forum.  We hung out for a while and watched VS do their damnedest to take down everything that made that forum special and replace it with everything that generated ad revenue, all the while telling us how much they just loved everything about the forum and how they really wanted to keep everything just as they found it. They'd do something dumb, like inserting viglink keyword links into our posts, and then tell us, gee, gosh, whoops, we sure didn't mean for that to happen, fellas, and I'll make sure my technical team takes care of that right away.  Riiiiight. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. 

Annual sponsorship bills came due. VS graciously offered existing vendors special "preferred rates" that were something like six or eight times what we were paying the previous owner. When I declined, one of a series of sales reps did a sort of "let me talk to the manager" used-car shuffle and came back with rates that were only nominally less ludicrous. I again declined and quietly walked away from the forum. It seemed like as good a time as any for the old Irish exit.

Summary: Verticalscope bad.

DarkMonohue said:

hybridmomentspass said:

VS bought MR2OC and is that the reason it faded so much or is it due to facebook?

I dont know. 

 Can't it be both?

I was a vendor on MR2OC, as was my employer (separately), when Verticalscope bought the forum.  We hung out for a while and watched VS do their damnedest to take down everything that made that forum special and replace it with everything that generated ad revenue, all the while telling us how much they just loved everything about the forum and how they really wanted to keep everything just as they found it. They'd do something dumb, like inserting viglink keyword links into our posts, and then tell us, gee, gosh, whoops, we sure didn't mean for that to happen, fellas, and I'll make sure my technical team takes care of that right away.  Riiiiight. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. 

Annual sponsorship bills came due. VS graciously offered existing vendors special "preferred rates" that were something like six or eight times what we were paying the previous owner. When I declined, one of a series of sales reps did a sort of "let me talk to the manager" used-car shuffle and came back with rates that were only nominally less ludicrous. I again declined and quietly walked away from the forum. It seemed like as good a time as any for the old Irish exit.

Summary: Verticalscope bad.

Thank you for posting your experiences on THAT side of the VS forum.

Mind if I ask what you sell or your employer? I ask because I might want to support you!

I didnt know about the ad rates, that freaking sucks that's how they do things.  Now there are no vendors on there...well, yes, there is one (that I know of) - some LED company that will spam about 4 threads every few months/holidays. I know there are people who sell things that are on there, like AlexW, but Im not sure if he's an actual sponsor or not. 

hybridmomentspass said:

Thank you for posting your experiences on THAT side of the VS forum.

Mind if I ask what you sell or your employer? I ask because I might want to support you!

I didnt know about the ad rates, that freaking sucks that's how they do things.  Now there are no vendors on there...well, yes, there is one (that I know of) - some LED company that will spam about 4 threads every few months/holidays. I know there are people who sell things that are on there, like AlexW, but Im not sure if he's an actual sponsor or not. 

Thanks for the offer of support, but those days are behind us. I'm no longer with that employer, they're no longer in the MR2 world, and I gave up the small business I was running. Losing MR2OC was not the only factor, but it was certainly a factor. 

When Verticalscope bought that forum out, my fear was that they would simultaneously run off both the community and the vendors that kept it vibrant.

DarkMonohue said:

hybridmomentspass said:

VS bought MR2OC and is that the reason it faded so much or is it due to facebook?

I dont know. 

 Can't it be both?

I was a vendor on MR2OC, as was my employer (separately), when Verticalscope bought the forum.  We hung out for a while and watched VS do their damnedest to take down everything that made that forum special and replace it with everything that generated ad revenue, all the while telling us how much they just loved everything about the forum and how they really wanted to keep everything just as they found it. They'd do something dumb, like inserting viglink keyword links into our posts, and then tell us, gee, gosh, whoops, we sure didn't mean for that to happen, fellas, and I'll make sure my technical team takes care of that right away.  Riiiiight. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. 

Annual sponsorship bills came due. VS graciously offered existing vendors special "preferred rates" that were something like six or eight times what we were paying the previous owner. When I declined, one of a series of sales reps did a sort of "let me talk to the manager" used-car shuffle and came back with rates that were only nominally less ludicrous. I again declined and quietly walked away from the forum. It seemed like as good a time as any for the old Irish exit.

Summary: Verticalscope bad.

Yes, that's another one of Verticalscope's annoying quirks that I've seen firsthand: They tend to crank the cost of sponsorship way up even as participation on the forum goes down. This generally tends to run off the smaller advertisers who are actively involved in the forum and leave only large corporate accounts (who may not be paying too much attention to their ROI) who are fine with just leaving their banner on the forum and don't care about actively supporting their wares or interacting with their customers.

MadScientistMatt said: 

Yes, that's another one of Verticalscope's annoying quirks that I've seen firsthand: They tend to crank the cost of sponsorship way up even as participation on the forum goes down. This generally tends to run off the smaller advertisers who are actively involved in the forum ...

Speaking of, I some some questions about upgrading my elderly MS1/3.0 setup. What's the best way/place to discuss my options?

VS seems to prefer immediately eating the goose over living off the eggs indefinitely.

DarkMonohue said:

 

Speaking of, I some some questions about upgrading my elderly MS1/3.0 setup. What's the best way/place to discuss my options?

 

Either email me at support@diyautotune.com, or start a thread on MSExtra.com's forum. I also try to have a look at any MegaSquirt thread here, of course.

It's already starting.

I'm getting pop ups like crazy and a lot of people are having problems using the forum, either reading, logging in or posting. I was unable to post anything for most of the morning

Sounds right. They ruin everything and then only fix what they must to keep everyone from leaving at once and starting a competing forum.

DarkMonohue said:

 competing forum.

I'm wondering how long it's going to take.

Maybe I should start a thread on there about doing just that

Mr. Peabody said:

Maybe I should start a thread on there about doing just that

"Oh, no. Please don't do that."

Yes, by all means do that. Act as quickly as possible with as many regulars and old timers on board as possible.

I rediscovered this thread today while looking for something else. Seems like a good time to ask how ThumperTalk is doing now with VS at the helm.

Its the same psychology as when you get a new boss at work.  The entire flavor of the place changes as everyone learns to navigate the new energy in the place.

Before VS, Pirate4x4 was a fantastic forum with a great signal/noise ratio.  The folks were a bit rough on noobs, but very helpful.  After VS things went downhill in about 6 months.  Normally-helpful people became complete asswipes, the ban stick came out and whittled away about 20% of the users, and people got so mad that death threats were reported to the FBI.  A few folks who wanted to keep it alive splintered off and made irate4x4 but it hasn't taken off well.

Another one I frequent, Hotrodders, was getting to be a pretty awesome place.  Thousands of users, a truckload of GRM-like knowledge, and thousands of new threads every week.  VS took it over and now it's basically 20-30 very active people who are mostly cool, and a few of the other 20,000 people show up once in a while to absolutely abuse people with vitriol and hate.  I used to log in daily and see hundreds of updated threads, now I visit about twice a week and there might be 75 per week.

Those are the two with which I've had the most experience.  I tried to register with a GM Truck forum that was VS and it took 3 months for a moderator to approve me.  

I don't know the real reason, but the two VS forums that I had a long history with (like 10 years or more) just imploded after VS.