Ladies,
USGenWeb is in a precarious situation. You have to look at several facts.
1. Rootsweb is part of "The Generations Network", a for-profit company.
TGN must provide to its owners/investors a return on their investment.
2. There are tens of thousands of sites being hosted at no charge at
Rootsweb. This is a financial drain to TGN of several thousand dollars
each month.
3. There are two ways to increase profits. (a)Increase Income and (b)cut
expenses. I don't know the financial condition of TGN - I have not been
able to find any financial information - it must be a privately held
company.
4. USGenWeb is in direct competition with TGN. USGenWeb offers
genealogical information at no charge to the visitor. TGN operates many
paid sites. Yet most USGenWeb sites are hosted by TGN at no charge.
5. TGN has been in a growth phase for several years, and has purchased or
taken over dozens of genealogy-related companies.
6. TGN can take any information on any of the sites on their servers and
place it on their paid services. They own the servers and they have total
control over their usage. Not USGenWeb, not you, but TGN.
7. USGenWeb is a valuable commodity. The domain
usgenweb.org alone could
fetch tens of thousands of dollars at a public sale. And I am not
qualified to estimate the PR value of the name USGenWeb.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that something is going on
at TGN. And it does not bode well for USGenWeb.
The banners that TGN is placing on sites are for their services. But what
if they decide to offer those banners for sale. Let's face it, with an
estimated 3 million visitors to Rootsweb each month, those banners would
be prime real estate, and could generate thousands of dollars each month
for TGN. Would you be just as comfortable with the banners if they were
for a dating service?
It would be suicide for USGenWeb to tell CC's to host their site with
someone else without any guidelines or assistance in securing a host. If
anyone told you that you could not host your sites on Rootsweb at no
charge it would be TGN. And they could discontinue free hosting tomorrow
with no notice whatsoever.
In the past 10 or so years that USGenWeb has been around, Rootsweb has
changed. World situations have changed. Economic conditions and business
operations have changed. But USGenWeb has not. It remains a group of
people who elect "leaders" and then don't listen to what the
"leaders"
say.
I look for many changes in USGenWeb over the next few months - changes
that they must make in order to continue existing. You may not like the
changes, but they must be made.
Dale Grimm
Madison & Greene Counties.
Joan,
It is highly unlikely that the USGenWeb advisory board would decide that
state and county sites would have to leave Rootsweb because of the
banners.
They may decide that they want to move the national site because of the
banners and some SC's and even some CC's may decide to move their sites
because of them but at this time please don't worry about your sites if
you
yourself are not bothered by the banners.
Holly Timm
-----Original Message-----
From: ohgen-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:ohgen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
Behalf Of Joan Asche
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 5:16 PM
To: ohgen(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [OHGEN] OHGenWeb?
What happens if GenWeb decides to not have rootsweb as a source of
free servers because they do not want the banners? Would this not mean
that those GenWeb sites hosted by RootWeb will need to move in order
to stay a GenWeb site?
Joan
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