Bright Things Share Discussion Threads

[uncle_bob] 23/4/2010 19:09

Hmmm well that big high street name will not be signed up with this shambles outfit for much longer.

[carl79] 23/4/2010 18:43

Hmmm - they must have pumped that out to all sites then - I had it too...Yep - a BIG highstreet name that every man and his dog know of...

[uncle_bob] 23/4/2010 18:29

Sounds like the company is being run by a bunch of clowns.

[olly94] 23/4/2010 18:25

me too,p off, but back up now, still little fixes to be done, There was big name in the style sheets that mixed in with my site, so should be good for bgt :)

[carl79] 23/4/2010 18:22

SocialGO Down - in a MAJOR way! My network was garbage, with mixed style sheets that did not belong to me - i raised an issue and now every SG site as far as i can tell is down...anyone on here have any SG sites - you getting the saem experience?

edit - seems to be fixed - at least they sorted quickly...wonder what went wrong - it seemed major

[norbus] 23/4/2010 11:49

That's why they say that No2 is often wiser than No1. Learns more and tries harder.

[the analyst] 22/4/2010 20:46

I'm quite sure that the 150,000 figure is the number that have 'registered', which very different from the number of 'active' networks

For comparison, ning have 2.3m registered, but only 300k active networks. More than that, of the last 1m registered networks at ning, it appears only 70k are 'active'

Based on that current form, SocialGO may only have 10k active networks

So, charging £2 per month would not bring in much revenue

But, what it would do is stop a lot of spam and prevent pervs signing-up. So, the important thing is it would free up staff to give better customer service to the paying customers and develop the product more quickly. This is vital, imo

[uncle_bob] 22/4/2010 19:55

Carl,
I have no doubt that giving almost free training will gain a bit of exposure but for what, to get a few more punters signed up free of charge.

From what I gather they have around 150000 active networks, charging £2 per month would be acceptable to most users and would bring in 300k a month revenue, so why aren't they charging.

Also Ning have said they are going "great guns" whereas BGT say nothing. It's about time we had a statement from the company about what's going on.

[carl79] 22/4/2010 19:38

doesnt seem that strange UncleB...Cost is probably less than £6k and one would assume they'll good exposure at the event and lots of content to produce further marketing in the near future...?

I do think they need to reign in the Free networks though - I get a socialGo Google alert and around half of the links im sent belong to some sort of SPAM site...not good

[uncle_bob] 22/4/2010 18:25

Seems like Socialgo are giving shareholders money away like confetti. Not only do shareholders get to pay for a bunch of degenerate freeloaders to use the site for putting out porn free of charge, they also pay for hugely discounted training for them.

Very Nu Lab and fits in well with their communal hippy 1960's business ethic.

I couldn't see Bill Gates or Larry Ellison being very impressed with this kind of thing.

[carl79] 22/4/2010 08:56

I do appreciate you point Yump but lets be realistic here. Lets say you run a company - lets call it company A - and you provide a service to a group of people in your local area. You work 9-5 and people get used to that and are quite happy. Fair enough...

Now lets say I move in and am hungry as hell for all that business in your area.

I set up my company A+, I work 8-6 and put in more hours if I think it will help convince your customers to use me on a regular basis. It is not long before i am doing "more" than you quicker - and maybe even better...

Now, it will not take long before loyal as they may be, people defect from you to me because my service is quite simply better - I may even be able to charge more!

Now i've oversimplified that but this is the world we live in. It is not all singing birds and sunshine - people are out there trying to eat the food from our plates! TA makes a valid point about Spence at WL. When he was more closely affiliated to SG, i'll be honest, I got a better service from him than i did from the SG staff. I ended up not using the SG staff and dealing direct with Spence. He would Email at what seemed all times of the day with fixes and responses to queries and he would even write some CSS code for me when i could not follow his instructions - you dont get this from SG staff (you might on concierge - i dont know)...Anyway, Spence seems to have a life revolving around making his business successful, the support staff at BGT probably dont have that same ethic - i'm not saying thats wrong - i mean goodness, we all need a "life" and some "down" time but my point is we are competing against guys like Spence so we need to try and match or improve upon the service levels. If we can't do the hours that he or others put in, we need to make sure our product is shipped out with as few defects as possible - we are not doing this just now and i hope V2 brings an end to some of the issues (well, actually all of the issues!) that plague V1.

Some people are driven (i'm firmly in that camp) and they can get frustrated when they work with people who are not. I don't have a problem with that, different strokes etc etc - however, in summation, when it comes to competition, we need to be as good as the next guy or we will fail - simple. If you are choosing a network provider, both charge $25 a month but one gives excellent customer service and innovation and the other doesnt quite hit the mark, then your decision is made - so we can't afford to rest on our laurels and if it means people need to work 12 hour days then find people who are willing to work 12 hour days and incentivise them as TA says - (share schemes as opposed to overtime preferably!)

In closing, it does not mean the company is not viable if they cant operate in the 9-5 window, it just means that things have changed and life is more competitive now - especially in the tech and programming world where the people at the forefront are really passionate about what they do and probably put in more than 60hr weeks - for them its not about a wage, its about success...just my thoughts...

[the analyst] 22/4/2010 08:42

It's not really about the absolute hours you are AT work, it's about productivity, the creative environment, the buzz, the excitement about the work and the feeling of pride in the results.

Given the right environment, people want to get things done better, more quickly and they tend to enjoy work just as much and sometimes more than leisure time. It's all about getting the right people together for the creative side, getting the incentives right for the more routine side of things and keeping things developing at the forefront of the field

I have worked in places with that buzz and energy of invention and it's fantastic. Doesn't feel like work, but more like play - creativity, great minds getting together, solving problems, seeing the product develop, getting the rewards..

In many ways the current tech leaders in 2010 create an environment that is similar to a world-class academic laboratory, there is a very real feeling of invention, of moving into new realms of discovery and optimism about the future. You begin to love seeing the results come through and the way the product develops

That's the type of ethic I'm talking about.

You are mistaken if you think it's about long hours, yump - it is so much more than that. This is a web 2.0 company in an ultra-competitive field of social media, not just a run of the mill SME

[yump] 22/4/2010 08:15

In this day and age, if the staff can't work a civilised number of hours (I don't mean just 40 btw) and get the job done, then the company is simply not viable.

I don't want anyone working silly hours just because I happen to hold shares.

...and as for dubious work ethics, well you can blame Thatcher for that, as she started the insidious change of work ethic into regarding money as a measure of success, which has undermined pride in doing a good job.

So you can hardly then blame people for a go-to-work-get-the-money-wait-for-the-weekend attitude. Although that would be tarnishing a lot of people wrongly imo.

and anyway, I've yet to find an SME where they work 9-5.

[carl79] 22/4/2010 07:55

I dont really think that that is his job...would be a bit unfair to lumber all that responsibility on him given his experience of running publicly traded companies - or obvious lack thereof...My guess would be he is responsible for making SG as good as it can be (technically etc) and it is Dom's job to make the company as profitable as it can be...but that is just a wild guess - I may be completely wrong

[uncle_bob] 22/4/2010 06:56

I don't think Alex Halliday is up to the task of turning BGT into a profitable company.

[carl79] 21/4/2010 22:36

Well, Spence and I are on the same page - Freemium is no more, I agree (or rather I think if people like SG canned it too it wouldn't be around for much longer) - and I dont know what the point of dragging out the free service any longer is - you'd need a damn good plan on how to convert them to paying sites or you are doomed to repeate the mistakes that ning did...but as previous i dont have all the facts so something may change my opinion...

It looks to me like Spence was firing a challenge at SocialGo to prove whether their "you keep your data" promise actually means anything when it comes to trying to move your data...maybe they are not as friendly as I thought - or maybe he is not talking about SocialGo...

I kinda wished SG had given a response like Spence - he said exactly what I felt - they, like SG are supposed to be interested in paying customers only. When it came to the crunch, he stood up there and told the free network owners to stump up some cash for a quality service or just roll on by...as a potential premium network owner, what message do you want to hear:

1/ we are exclusively dedicated to serving you and making you successful

2/ We are still accepting free networks and may not have as much time as we'd like for you...Ning had shed loads of free sites and it may take us a while to integrate them...

Now, I know SG have not said that [no.2] (they havent really said anything) but Spence intimates as much and gives a good pitch...

I can only hop hope they have their strategy boxed off...Dom is a smart cookie so I expect he has analysed the angles - just a case of waiting for some news and hopefully the promise of increased revenues as they take advantage of the Ning "event"

PS, the Urban Nice GO IM bar (i assume it is essentially the same) is miles better than SG's...I sincerely hope that SG are working on this WITH Urban Niche otherwise it would appear that it is an example of some 3rd party beating SG at their own game...we've said it before but worth highlighting again...if SG are to be successful in the premium space, they need to be pioneers and experts at what they do. If not, they will lose quite quickly to those who do things slicker, quicker and with less bugs...check out the two bars here and make your own mind up:




Maybe im jumping to conclusions, maybe Urban Niche are trialling BetaV2 or something but at first glance, it just looks like they've come up with a better product in terms of functionality and aesthetics...

[the analyst] 21/4/2010 21:59

This is a serious company, klaus

However, competition is becoming quite fierce and imo they will need to step things up to quickly build on all the good things they have done so far and take advantage of the opportunity they have had presented to them

[klaus18] 21/4/2010 21:15

Is this company a business run for shareholders or a charity run by a bunch of naive do-gooders for the benefit of freeloaders. It seems the answer is the latter, which is why this company is doomed.

[the analyst] 21/4/2010 21:04

Carl, looks like you were right about this site:

[the analyst] 21/4/2010 21:01

Good spot, I wonder which of the services they are using or if this is a new service just for ning users?

I only spotted this one under the pro services page which is for the transfer of members, but not content:

[uncle_bob] 21/4/2010 20:55

Socialgo are charging a $150 fee to transfer network content over from Ning. It looks like there might be a few takers.

[the analyst] 21/4/2010 19:56

Rather than use the term 'lazy', perhaps it would be kinder if I used the term 'british working ethics'

I was told that Spence at WL was really frustrated by the working ethics at SG. Generally, the working ethics in the US are quite different from the UK and I can understand where Spence is coming from on that from my experience working in New York

In many British companies I've seen, staff can't wait for Friday - the ritual drinking session followed by a weekend lazing around at home, then lethargically rolling into work on Monday morning, only to leave again by 5pm. Then there are the 30 days holidays per year. Not bad compared to France, but not productive compared to the US where you will quite often find the average joe working as if it's his company

It's not about the absolute number of hours, but the environment in which people work. The way people feel about getting projects done well and on time, the feeling of excitement about the future...

So, I hope that the team at BGT have the incentives (share options and enthusiasm from the top) that make them WANT to work all hours to get the platform where it should be, to get the share price where it should be. It's much better if staff love to work hard and take real pride in their achievements rather than them seeing their daily work as 'another day at the office'

I'm not making accusations, I have no idea what the system is, but without updates from the company, all we can see is the platform and how it progresses day to day, which from my perspective seems slow in 2010. I thought it was good in 2009, but this year I have seen very little when I was expecting really big things

Should moving the servers to a new host really have taken 3 months?

I know that the senior staff work very hard at BGT, so I just hope the same is true for the others and that there is a very good reason why progress 'seems' so slow over the past four months

Like I say, hopefully it is a combo of working on V2 and concierge service take-up

[uncle_bob] 21/4/2010 19:55

Socialgo have a couple of job vacancies. Part of one ad says the company focuses on the "subscription business model".

Extract as follows:

"SocialGO is a leading Saas platform for building niche social networking websites. Founded in July 2007, SocialGO focuses on a subscription business model. The team comprises of 25 people."

[carl79] 21/4/2010 18:47

I certainly don't think we have lazy staff...I guess we'll need to wait and see if they are focussing attention on (what we feel) are the right areas...

I would like to see a more mercenary approach by BGT - the warm cuddly image that they give is great and all but unless it turns into pounds in the coffers at some stage, then i dont really want it to last. I'd have had them charge everyone at least a nominal amount right now but perhaps the product and reputation/brand loyalty would not survive such a move...that said, doing an about face after 3 months when they have say 40,000 ning customers might do just as much damage given Dom and Alex's recent comments..."We haven't constantly changed our business model,"...We do need some clarity on how they plan to progress and i hope it comes sooner rather thn later