[csdenmark]

Lately I have noticed some of the YELLOW have used the broadcast feature for advertising of tourney sign-up. I have disabled lobby chat but the broadcast feature is overruling that - and generally good so. I think the feature has never been intended to be used in that way.

Instead I have now silenced those YELLOW persons - but I don't think it is right of me to block any of the YELLOW. They ought to have free access to all members to be able to do their job.

[luke warm]

imo broadcast feature should only be used when there is news of interest to bbo population (such as vugraph, server probs, etc) OR to advertise a pay tourney... not a free tourney

[Brandal]

luke warm, on Feb 20 2005, 12:33 PM, said:

imo broadcast feature should only be used when there is news of interest to bbo population (such as vugraph, server probs, etc) OR to advertise a pay tourney... not a free tourney

Regarding Pay-tourneys and broadcast,
it would be nice if software could recognize
who has money on their account,and only
broadcast to them,filtering out those who
have no interest in knowing about the Pay-tourney.



Frode

[ack_hh]

Brandal, on Mar 7 2005, 12:14 PM, said:

Regarding Pay-tourneys and broadcast,
it would be nice if software could recognize
who has money on their account,and only
broadcast to them,filtering out those who
have no interest in knowing about the Pay-tourney.

The following message "bla bla ..." could not be delivered
due to lack of BB$.

[hrothgar]

Here is my biased perspective: Ultimately, in life an aweful lot collapses down to Supply, Demand, and Pricing...

There are a variety of ways in which BBO can monetize its membership base. Charging a membership fee is one obvious solution, however, to date BBO's management has been resisting this. (And we are all very grateful...) BBo is exploring a variety of alternative revenue schemes, ranging from hosting fee-based tournaments to selling content like BridgeMaster hands.

More recently, BBO has begun experimenting with advertizing. When I logged in on Friday - maybe Staurday - I was both pleased and surprised to see an ad for the Bridge World in the news window. (For what its worth, the Bridge World is an excellent magazine and well worth a subscription even without the generous two months extra subscription for BBO members)

With this said and done, I do have some concerns regarding the broadcast traffic for tournaments on BBO. Experience has demonstrated that pricing systems are by far the best mechanism to constrain advertizing. When prices are set too low, the quantity of advertizing explodes and suddenly our mailboxes are choked with Spam...

Case in point: There are a number of tournaments that blast multiple system messages to everyone on the system for each of their tournaments. While I have no way of measuring the effectiveness of these broadcasts, I'm willing to bet that the conversion rate is very low... (Your getting a lot of page views, but I doubt that its causing many people to sign up for the tournaments)

This introduces some VERY real inefficiencies in the system: Most notably, as individuals get Spammed with high volmes of messages, they start to ignore everything coming across this channel.

From my own perspective, the best way to proceed would be to find some way to establish a pricing mechanism for the Broadcast traffic...

1. Differentiate between "Yellows" who are acting in an administrative capacity and commercial partners. Establish separate broadcast channels for each class.

2. Treat advertizing as an official product. Establish pricing levels for both the news window as well as system wide broadcast.

Ultimately, I believe that this type of model would be most successful in balancing the needs of the various constituencies...

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Mar 7 2005, 09:48 AM, said:

Here is my biased perspective: Ultimately, in life an aweful lot collapses down to Supply, Demand, and Pricing...

...

Ultimately, I believe that this type of model would be most successful in balancing the needs of the various constituencies...

You talk almost as if you have some sort of advanced business degree!

[Walddk]

TimG, on Mar 7 2005, 01:52 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 7 2005, 09:48 AM, said:

Here is my biased perspective:  Ultimately, in life an aweful lot collapses down to Supply, Demand, and Pricing...

...

Ultimately, I believe that this type of model would be most successful in balancing the needs of the various constituencies...

You talk almost as if you have some sort of advanced business degree!

My English does not suffice here. It is arguably due to my inadvertent conduct in the 5th grade of the local village school. Or maybe it was my English teacher's lack of ability to teach the incomprehensible substance of real English.

I want my school money back!

Roland

[fred]

hrothgar, on Mar 7 2005, 02:48 PM, said:

More recently, BBO has begun experimenting with advertizing.  When I logged in on Friday - maybe Staurday - I was both pleased and surprised to see an ad for the Bridge World in the news window.  (For what its worth, the Bridge World is an excellent magazine and well worth a subscription even without the generous two months extra subscription for BBO members)

Not that it is relevant to the current thread, but you might be interested in knowing that The Bridge World thing is an unpaid ad.

We are working on an agreement with The Bridge World magazine that involves mutual promotion. The main motivation behind this agreement is that the BBO management really likes The Bridge World magazine and The Bridge World management really likes BBO. Both companies think their customers can benefit from exposure to work that the other company does. Our hope is to work out an agreement in which no money changes hands.

We are not adverse to selling ads (especially if the ads are related to bridge), but the Bridge World ad you saw in the lobby news is not meant to be a source of revenue for BBO.

Needless to say, the endorsement by me that appears on the ad is also an unpaid endorsement. Even if I was being paid I would not endorse a produt I didn't believe in, but in this particular case I credit much of what I know about bridge to my many years of studying The Bridge World. I really believe that this magazine is one of the few examples of "must read material" for advanced players.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com