Seems IB own a lot including PassionFord.com!

Im sure they'll be good for the community

 

What a surprise. Good luck Simon

 

Not surprising in the slightest. Watching with interest.

 

Crikey a blast from the past

Hi Tel

 

All things change.

 

agreed!

wondering what ever happend to .......

"we will be here long after trolls like you have gone"

 

haha true true bros

I must admit bros i had a wee tear in my eye bro i swear, nae many tears bros, just like a wee bit of spud juice bros i swear.

where my bro saladin tae join in thae celebrations bros?

Ameen tae thae n peace oot bro

 

Morning all

Many thanks again for all the great comments.

This is a massive one, and a really good question. I spent approx 3 solid weeks thinking of nothing else but a way that I could offer scoobynet to the community.

I consulted a number of people who's opinion I respect, and the response was mixed, but in the end I realised that making a public announcement that ScoobyNet was up for sale, would cause way more problems than it would solve. (We all know how some of the small minded individuals we have to suffer would have reacted).

So...

I set about trying to find an individual who would be able to buy / maintain the site from within the community, but talking to a number of key people that I thought could quietly spread the word.

I let this run for some time, and got REALLY close with a couple of people, but in the end, it was just not viable.

My ideal would have been to offer shares in the site so the community as a whole could own it, but the admin, and complications would have ended up so huge that whoever was in charge would need to work on it full time with assistants just to keep the owner's happy, let alone looking after ScoobyNet.

In the end, I decided that a well resourced, important force who has a vested interest in the flourishing of communities, rather than the exploitation of advertising on them would be the best bet. Who could take ScoobyNet and add to it, making it better and supporting it in the right way.

I have to say.. Internet Brands being the owner's of vBulletin, and having a specific interest in Automotive Forums, literally couldn't be a better new owner from this perspective, so I'm delighted.

 

No trolling in this thread please. That's a very straight forward request.

 

some questions

how will this effect the people who have paid for lifetime and 10years plus access to the features, did they make the contract with you? or scoobynet? the first thing i did when i took over a franchise was scrap all prepaid accounts as the customers had given money to the previous owner, not me.

do you expect (like i do to be honest) the traffic to start coming down when 10 year old cars are costing 4/5/600 quid a year to tax ?

when this ryan chap comes in, will it be like the new stand in teacher at school, all the naughty boys are especially naughty till he is "broke in"

 

Can we have full names of the people who now use the "Webmaster" handle?

Or at the very least, can the people who use it sign off with their own name, so mere users have a clue who they are talking to.

Regards

ALi-B

 

I'd personally find that kind of business practice distasteful, and I think most would agree. As for the question, I'll leave it to Ryan to answer this

No. On the contrary, I expect traffic to increase due to that. If a car costs a lot more to own, it means that those who own them REALLY want them, and as such are enthusiasts.

Whilst it shouldn't matter which individual you're talking to (as you're basically talking to a ScoobyNet function) and I don't think its necessary, I'll leave it to Ryan to decide on this side of things.

 

Seems a lot of things are being left to Ryan .

When will "Ryan" be along to introduce himself ??

 

For all you know, he could have just posted above you

 

shaggy1973

Thank you. Regarding your questions, as stated, there are no plans to change scoobynet, apart from to move it to bigger faster servers, and support it more.

finalzero

Many thanks for your suggestions. We'll discuss them and see what's viable.

Greatnorth

Many thanks for your very well worded post. Regarding your question, I really don't think you have anything to worry about in that regard.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

 

CAN YOU BORROW US A TENNER?

 

YHPM Webby

 

Well done, I think (so far) the site has been tremendous. I hope it doesnt change, but sadly I have a feeling it will.
It will now be run for profit.
STEVE................

 

what makes you say that?

 

Sticky. One more trolling post and we'll start deleting / issuing infractions. Like a bumble bee, repeatedly bashing his head against a pane of glass, it will pointless complaining about over zealous infractions if you continue.

You've said your piece, you've asked your questions, that's it.

Please don't spoil this thread for everyone else. If you would like to discuss this post or anything else, please either PM me, or post in scoobynet policy.

 

Steve

Thank you sir

To be honest, you might be surprised in terms of the commercial side.

I'll give you an example. Little old me, attempting to get good rates on advertising from big companies, is very difficult, so we have to include far more ads across the site in order to make it pay for itself. It is likely that a bigger company with better buying power will be able to make considerably more revenue from existing banner slots, and will therefore have no need to "plaster adverts everywhere".

Basically, I have spent considerable time looking at this, and making sure things go the right way.

There were plenty of deals on the table... Some of the more cynical amongst us might have just lined them up in terms of price / benefits.

The problem with this method is that it doesn't take into account some of the plans some of the companies / individuals had including :

1) Sell all the email addresses
2) Stick up **** / gambling ads everywhere
3) Drop the current memberships
4) Move the members into an entirely new network
5) Force a pay only model
etc
etc

Think about this. I've just made an announcement, that Internet Brands (one of the most respected players in the industry) have acquired ScoobyNet. I'm still onboard. There are no changes to the site planned at all, except that they are planning to move the site to faster, bigger, better servers.

Isn't this the dream deal?

But, as usual, one or two small minded individuals always look for a negative side. I reckon if we gave every member on ScoobyNet a tenner they'd want to know why it wasn't £11.

You just can't win with some people.

The great thing is. The voices of those more normal people can now be heard way above those of the whingers, and I appreciate all the support from everyone.

 

thanks for all your hard work simon
martin

 

Well done Simon et al.

I've spent the last 7 years lurking on here at lunchtimes with great pleasure, so, many thanks!

Here's to the next 7 years.

Mike

 

Congrats on the sale Simon.

Where do your current paying advertisers stand?

Perhaps an email to all of them might have been appropriate?

Buck

 

Buckrogers

As I've said a number of times. There are currently no plans to change anything at all apart from to move to new faster servers.

Simon

 

Fair play to you for getting it as far as you have. I have a reasonable idea as to the amount of work it takes to build something like this and it is not to be sniffed at.
I sincerly hope you made a mint out of the sale and continue to hang around and post. That will hopefully give me the chance to give you a hard time on an even keel

If the new owner is as clever as he should be other than other than charging people to advertise things for sale he wont change much. Why muck about with a winning formula

 

Likewise.

It was always on the cards - its just a shame Simon would never admit to it

But I can live with that, quite happily infact, and wish him all the best. I only hope he got a better deal than Northern Rock shareholders are likely to get

 

Guys, if you want to know what changes are likely to happen, look at some of the other forums run by Internet Brands. They look fine to me.

They're fairly big - with a market cap of $334m. They only floated on the NASDAQ earlier this week.

 

Hats off to you Simon you have done a great job getting scoobynet to where it is now, good luck to you

 

TopBanana

Stop using hard facts and specific, directly relevant examples. It spoils it for the bitter brigade, who prefer to state their own twisted view of the situation as fact!

-

Gutmann LOL. I look forward to my infractions!

-

Devildog

It always surprises me how meek and submissive you are to me on MSN or in private, and how much you talk the big talk in front of everyone. Bitterness personified.

Its very difficult to insult some people's intelligence.

You're Mr Finance. Check out the accounts of scoobynet, and work out all the massive profits its made, and the huge directors salaries. Then take the number of hours you would estimate Shaun and I have spent WORKING on scoobynet (actual work : accounts, admin, legals, meetings, banking, sales, customer service, writing software, etc, etc, etc) over the last 8 years, and multiply that by what you value yourself at per hour. I think you'll come to a fairly unrealistically huge figure.

Then knock the figure back down to a more realistic one, and divide that by the number of hours, and ask yourself "would I work weekends, evenings, holidays, christmas day, etc, etc, etc for 8 years for that hourly rate?"

Then ask your intelligence the straight forward question "Does that sound like 'doing it for the money' to you?"

You might be willing to ***** yourself out for that kind of hourly rate, but I'm certainly not.

-

Anyway.. Shaun, myself, and anyone who knows me well, knows the real situation. Everyone can speculate, but what you can clearly see from things like this ..

1) Some people just say "well done!" and "thank you for everything".
2) A select few whinge and whine, and say "see i told you it was all evil".

I know which of the above two types of people I'd rather have a beer with, and that is the big lesson I've gained from being involved in ScoobyNet for so long.