The Question and Answer Board

[Mattu]

Thought I would post this article and make a quick comment...

So you guys don't blast me :) ... Below, my comment regarding "kids" *meant* the fights that users get in over such small, pidly things..Not the community in general!

Enjoy!

Matt

SI Bob To Challenge Silicon Investor From Startup Site
By RIVA RICHMOND
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK -- Bob Zumbrunnen doesn't just get mad, he gets even.
Zumbrunnen, known in online-trading circles as SI Bob or SI Admin (Bob), was
police chief at stock-discussion site Silicon Investor until he was laid off
in February by the Web site's parent company, InfoSpace Inc. (INSP). The
move sparked a user campaign to bring him back, to no avail.
But now Zumbrunnen, 42, is back in the game. On Thursday, he became
operations manager at startup stock-talk site Investors Hub Inc.,
Tallahassee, Fla., and assumed a new screen name, IH Admin (Bob). From his
new home he wants to build the online community he always dreamed Silicon
Investor could be.
Investors Hub "reminds me more of the old Silicon Investor than anything
I've seen out there, from a philosophical standpoint and from a
technological standpoint," said Zumbrunnen in an interview with Dow Jones
Newswires.
"We think we will become more popular than (other stock-talk) sites by
taking the best aspects of those sites, and avoiding the worst aspects."
Investors Hub promises to be both a kinder, gentler place to talk about the
market - absent spam and personal attacks - and highly responsive to
community complaints and suggestions for improvement. The way it's
programmed also makes it "speedy and secure," he said.
A Taste For Worlds Of Passion And Risk
Zumbrunnen chose Investors Hub after being "inundated" with other offers. It
was "basically the site I wanted to write myself," wrote Zumbrunnen in a
message on the site Thursday.
He will be a key figure at Investors Hub, acting as both liaison to the
community and one of the site's programmers. He has not invested his own
money in the site, but part of his compensation included a stake of less
than 5%, he said.
Zumbrunnen, a resident of a Missouri town with less than 200 inhabitants,
which he likes to call "Boogerville," will be "100% telecommuting."
The jump may seem risky considering the current environment for financial
Web sites, which are facing both dot-com disdain and a steep stock-market
decline. Most message-board sites have seen large drops in usage as
surviving online investors seek more reliable educational content. Analysts
and participants like Zumbrunnen expect the sites to rebound with the
market.
It helps that Zumbrunnen has a taste for worlds of passion and risk. When
he's not immersed in the online stock world, he's racing one of his
souped-up Mustangs. "This (cyber-cop) role does test your sanity," he said.
"I really only truly relax when I'm on a race track and going as fast as I
can go."
It also helps that he apparently found a site with founders who share his
vision and will give him wide latitude to act.
"He was basically my golden opportunity," said Matt Brown, the 18-year-old
president and co-founder of Investors Hub. When Zumbrunnen was fired by
InfoSpace, Brown quickly offered him a job, figuring Zumbrunnen's experience
in managing an online community, and his good name in the stock-chat world,
would be a boon. With Zumbrunnen on board, Brown could focus on the
business. "I don't have the patience to deal with a bunch of kids," he said.
Investors Hub was founded in a year ago and is still in the beta testing
stage while a number of other tools and stock-research features are
developed. Its message boards receive about 800 posts a day, said Brown.
Zumbrunnen's debut Thursday caused a jump in usage, he said.
Another Product Of SI
Brown is a pure product of the golden age of Silicon Investor, where he was
part of an investing club that ultimately became the seed for the site.
He was introduced to stock trading at age 13 by his mother, who was an
assistant to a broker. His first stock purchase was ValueJet the day before
the bottom fell out of its stock when one of its planes crashed and killed
110 people. Brown lost most of the $2,000 he had saved during summer
vacation. "That's when I got mad, and I got on the investment boards," to
learn about investing, he said.
But Brown became disillusioned as the quality of the discussions
deteriorated. "It's like a trailer park out there," he said. "I don't want
to lose what was once there and I enjoyed so much."
Zumbrunnen and Brown are of one mind about what their task will be - "making
sure spam and personal attacks are no longer part of investment discussion
forums," as Brown puts it - and how they will accomplish it: Community
self-policing.
"There's nobody that knows the community better than the community. And the
community can take care of itself if given the chance," said Brown, who
disdains the "centralized government" style of the leading message-board
sites.
The heart of Investors Hub's strategy is the "Chairman of the Board," the
founder of each discussion, who is charged with keeping the conversation
clean and on the topic. The chairman may quickly and easily remove spam and
objectionable messages and ban habitual offenders. Zumbrunnen will act as an
advisor to the chairpeople as well as the contact person for
community-member complaints.
While Zumbrunnen prefers to be as unobtrusive as possible, he will intrude
as necessary. "You try to keep a lid on the pressure cooker," he said. "If
you try not to interfere at all, you will have chaos."
-By Riva Richmond, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5670;
[e-mail]