"Why Investors Hub?"
Or, to give the fuller question: "Why is the guy formerly known as "SI Bob" now working for a startup site called Investors Hub?"
When I was laid off from Silicon Investor in a mass layoff across the parent company, InfoSpace, I was immediately inundated with offers to join other sites, including 3 offers of majority or complete ownership of existing sites, and offers of funding to create a site of my own.
For the first few weeks, I was leaning very strongly toward starting a site of my own. I feel that the community is still out there, though not as much on Silicon Investor anymore, and that if I wrote a site that simply enabled the community rather than constantly impeding it, it would be successful; basically the original Silicon Investor philosophy.
I'm not talking about just the technology, though it's the most important aspect. I'm also talking about inflexible rules. To use an easy example, forbidding "spam", but not defining it (despite my asking for a definition to be added to the Terms Of Use many times while I was there and being repeatedly assured it'd be added -- last I checked, it's not even in their Glossary).
What I wanted to build was a site that emulated the old Silicon Investor while avoiding a lot of the problems of the new version. A simple interface that's navigated quickly and easily and isn't full of "features" that visually distance the user from the underlying function of such a site: reading and posting messages.
Also, by writing my own site, with the help of my best friend (who can code circles around me), I could assure that it's done competently. That was a HUGE issue for me, and those who saw how I dealt with the Oracle changeover, and read between the lines, could see the huge layer of disgust that was right below the surface. Disgust that'd been there for ages and was caused by such things as making a new user's loginID and alias the same thing (thus giving away 50% of their login info, the password hint often giving away the other 50%) despite my frequent table-pounding about it being a major security issue. Disgust at inane indexing that was so bad, I was only allowed to delete posts at night because a single deletion would take several minutes and slow the site to a crawl. Disgust at sending 64,000 characters of data to display a 1,000-character message. Disgust at interface decisions made by people who didn't use the site. Disgust at never being asked for my thoughts on new features and being ignored when I offered those thoughts.
Geez, that's a big can of worms that easily led to one of my trademark digressions. Suffice it to say that the most important thing I wanted was a site that didn't have the many technological problems of where I came from. Again, a site that enables the community rather than impeding it.
Something that a lot of people don't know about me (but was a major reason Brad and Jeff Dryer hired me in the first place) is that I started a BBS (for those who weren't around then, that's a "Bulletin Board System", which was the predecessor of internet message board sites) in 1987 and quickly grew it into one of the largest in the country (at one time, it was by far the largest in terms of file availability) and was one of the few profitable ones. I shut it down in 1997 when I saw internet message boards getting ready to beat me up and take my lunch money. The lessons I learned running it apply 100% to the internet variety of the same thing.
While running my BBS, I attended a BBS convention at which Jack Rickard (publisher of Boardwatch magazine) spoke at length about "community" being the most important word when discussing online communities. The lesson stuck and is why I've always preached that all decisions, be they about technology or rules of engagement, have to take the community into account first.
I wanted to create a site that always kept the community in mind and tried not to interfere with it unnecessarily. I wanted the site to be completely server-based, so that only the minimal amount of necessary data would be transmitted to the user, making for a faster and more secure site.
So, I was putting together the game plan for developing such a site when I ran into Investors Hub.
After looking at it in-depth, I found that Investors Hub was basically the site I wanted to write myself. A simple, streamlined, intuitive interface, without a lot of stuff getting in the way of the underyling purpose of the site.
I spoke with the owners at length for about a month and found that not only did they share my opinion of what a message board site should be, they would let me be responsible for guiding what it would eventually become.
I knew that if I started my own site, I would be competing against a site that not only would be a formidable competitor, but that'd already found a soft spot in my heart because of the many things it was already doing "right". Not to say that it's perfect, but it will become nearly so.
And that's why I have accepted a position at Investors Hub. I will be performing many of the same duties I performed at Silicon Investor, which was Terms of Service enforcement and (attempts at) getting sparring combatants to chill out.
I am looking forward to being a part of developing this site into the place where most of the online-savvy market investors and traders congregate, and expect to do so primarily by giving you, the community on whom such a site utlimately depends, what you need in such a site.
Regards,
Bob Zumbrunnen
Operations Manager, Investors Hub
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