I could list more, I could clarify more but I won't as the past speaks and current actions and direction taken regarding the product speak for themselves. I do not find vB5 to be a very promising future for vBulletin and I sincerely hope it improves, promptly.
Hasn't this entire episode felt - to folks old enough to remember - alot like the "New Coke" disaster, or the Windows Millennium disaster? Only drawn out over years instead of months?
There's something to be learned from this, IB. Both above tried to fix what wasn't broken, trying to become something they were not and were never intended to be - and the loyal employees, customers, vendors, everyone else be damned.
For those folks even older: Didn't this same thing happen to the big three automakers, back in the 70s and 80s when they tried to compete with the Japanese and German car makers who were worming their way into the US auto market by kicking Detroit's collective ass in quality and reliability of the product?
The difference is, nobody was kicking vBulletin's ass. Nobody was kicking Coke's ass, or Microsoft's ass. vBulletin is kicking its own ass. The other difference? Coke, Microsoft and even the US auto industry woke up from their fantasy of being a "me too" and went back to their roots and saved their own collective asses.
If IB continues on its present course there will be NO saving vBulletin's ass. You better wake the hell up and start studying some product history and the blunders - and recoveries - therein and the lessons taught.
You've taken a once robust, market-dominating platform and turned it into garbage and a punch line to tech nerd jokes. Enabling far inferior competitors - who never had a ghost of the prayer of even sniffing decent market share for forum platforms until you stepped on your own penis with atrocities like version 5 and to a lesser degree, version 4 - to begin taking over the market, filling a void YOU created.
And that's the memo. You may now resume shaving your back.
03-02-2014, 08:53 PM
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