RideMonkey, HCOR, Transcend stop free advertising!

[GoingDHfast]

I think this sucks for us users... It means we only get to see "new stuff" when the company's allow it and pay $$ for it..

This was posted by "Transcend" on RideMonkey

"To keep RM, Transcend, Hcor and other sites alive we need advertising. The industry doesn't seem interested in any way shape or form in helping out, but boy, do they sure want free publicity.

The 3 of us have teamed up and will be forming an advertising network and content sharing network. This triples our ad selling power and offers a good balance between content sites, and forum sites. We will also be accepting new applications for membership once it gets fully operational.

We will no longer be posting product press releases of ANY kind. Race press releases will of course be allowed. If these companies want free online advertising they can go elsewhere, if they want to target what amounts to 3 of the top 5 or 6 sites statistics wise for online MTBinfo, they can pay for it.

RM's business market is just the beginning."

[Rik]

This could be interesting. Will they also prevent members of the industry from posting in their forums? For websites are all about forums anyway, with more knowledge being imparted through discussion than any press release could dream of sharing. Having industry forumers is a great way to get good PR for the company, as well as get "real" rider feedback for their products. Limiting press releases on the website is one thing, but will there then be a crackdown on threads that edge close to being promotional? It could be biting the hand that feeds them...

[S.]

I'm sure that'll cause major dramas, because there's soooo many press releases on those sites and in the MTB industry in general...

[Rik]

Well it's caused dramas in the forums already, threads being deleted for being "spam like", where a member posted a picture of a new bike to spawn a discussion... how are we meant to e-speculate about something now :confused:

[bradh]

i agree with goingDHfast, in a sense. i think it's disappointing in a way, since i garner a lot of industry information from the press releases published on such sites. however, i do agree with the site managers' decision. i think it's perfectly fair. web advertising is viewed with a considerable amount of scepticism these days — understandably so, given its boom and bust — but companies need to recognise the very real and very targeted audience that sites such as farkin, RM, hcor, transcend, etc. attract. there'd be shitloads of corporate mtb money thrown into magazine advertising every year; companies should support the interactive equivalent as well.

and to allay goingDHfast's concern: although these three sites have opted to not publish press releases, there's certainly going to be many more that will continue to do so. i don't reckon pinkbike, for example, will follow their lead. and besides, it's a bit tiring when one visits different sites only to find that their news pages — and their news archives — are all identical, because they're all just uploading the same press releases. in short, although RM, hcor and transcend won't be publishing every press release that comes along, that information will still be available.

and rik: i agree. the crackdown on potentially 'spam-like' posts could, if done too enthusiastically, severely limit certain types of perfectly legitimate forum discussion.

[S.]

heh, I just realised that this only makes it *better* for free sites like Farkin/Pinkbike/NSMB... who's gonna pay for a press release when they can just send it to one of the other sites? Heaps of people cross-link etc, everyone would find out the same stuff anyway.