For what it's worth, here's my opinion:
At the moment, and with the current resources/capital on hand, the company simply cannot be a one stop shop for all marijuana-related news as they had initially set out to be. To do this, a company would need satellite reporters, a full time team of writers, producers, camera persons, equipment, editors, computers, etc. It's just too big of a task to undertake with current funding (which, I presume isn't a WHOLE lot judging by the need to use a green screen studio).
The shows that are released, the company's best effort to reach aforementioned requirements, are somewhat dated by the time they're released due to having to be written, rehearsed, edited, and so forth prior to being uploaded. The very nature of the current setup does not draw traffic to the website which is the company's bread and butter. As someone had stated before, the videos can be seen directly on YouTube, Facebook, and referenced from Twitter. Basically, as an ordinary person simply looking for information on marijuana, you never once have to go to the website to get the rather limited information the company is even offering. You can follow them on your Twitter feed, click a link, and go straight to YouTube to get it. You can't go to the website and read the articles - well, you CAN, but the articles are basically the transcripts from the videos themselves. Again, no reason to actually visit the website.
The current website format could potentially work if the company had more writers out there gathering information and leads to write stories on to post to the website. This ALONE would make the website worth visiting but, again, with limited funds and resources, there are no writers doing this. There should have been advertisers already onboard at the time of launch displaying banners on the company's site to draw additional revenue but, again, there aren't. As investors, we're literally left with what seem so be an incomplete product: a website that does not require traffic to view its contents, articles that don't need to be read, and no other content or pulling factor to keep anyone coming back for any reason other than us, and we're only doing it to see if they've changed anything.
I understand that it's early and that there is plenty of room to grow, but this really could have been planned better. I don't know how much in terms of resources companies like The Verge started out with but I use them as an example of how it should be done. They were up against several others in the industry that offered a similar website and information but they did it right. They had the writers, the content, and subsequently, the viewership that every website desperately needs to survive. Josh Topolsky single handedly took that vision of offering not just a tech site but a site on life, social events, photography, science, and all the things people care about and wrapped it up nicely to keep people entertained and coming back for more.
What Chris should have done is take a more serious approach to the news site he dreamt of offering us. Had a team of writers willing to put articles up on there that would make the site worth visiting, and lined up tangible revenue streams for all and especially us to be able to see. All the red flags leading into this were telling a story that some of us didn't listen to or were in denial about. The not knowing if the letter was sent out, the website delay, the not addressing the studio picture concerns until much later, the misspelling of Los Angeles on the Twitter profile, the public and investors not knowing if it's potnetwork420.com, potnetwork.com, potnetwork420.tv, potnetwork.tv - and all the other things that have went wrong to this point which could have been avoided.
I wasn't expecting CNN. I was expecting a website with content that would keep people there. That's all. And I held several million shares of this company in hopes that we would be able to get that. We didn't. Failed launch, in my opinion, for the aforementioned reasons. This could have been prevented, even with the limited resources that we have.
I'm not bashing, just voicing my opinion as a frustrated shareholder as I have a right to do so. I still want the best for each of you and the company. At this time, there are other plays I'm interested in that are moving where I feel like I can recoup my losses. I want to make money, bottom line. And where the hell's Dr. Goulding?
Disclosure: I've sold at a loss but keep a core position.
