I couldn't care less about JJHuddle. I'll be here until this place goes up in smoke. I can cuss and degrade people here. Why would I ever leave?

I tried to tell JJ that tyranny don't fly on no internet. Did he listen to me? No. People didn't go there for their sorry ass content. They went there for the Forums...which are easily replicated.

I honestly wouldve loved to have been there when they figured this plan out. About as close to signing your own death warrant as you can get.

I saw a steelers/chiefs thread started 24 hours ago. Has like a dozen reads...like 2 - 3 repsonses..We used to always have about 5-6 steelers fans that would always be on those and of course bengal/browns fans chiming in and such.

Looks like a ghost town. Barely even threads being started...saw JJ himself has 2-3 of his own threads started to try and get things goin i guess.

Even if they did reverse face and let people back there's no way I'd go back...

They're going to go down, and they're going to go down in flames..

^^^ditto--I really like it here,and I ain't goin' nowhere

I won't go back either. I've been trying to leave for years but kept reading a lot. I didn't post as much because that place was filled with d-bags and negative responses.

This, my friends, is the place to be.

I think this site was essential to the downfall of JJhuddle. This gave people another option to get their fix of sports talk, and paying $12 just to stay on a site with the title "JJ" was not worth it. I bet they cringe every time they hear "freehuddle.com" because that ultimately cost them a lot of money.

I honestly do not visit the site anymore, haven't had a need. It is sort of sad, but hey, out of the whole deal, we got the freehuddle. So, a blessing in disguise really.

Check out the other huddle now. I just got done spamming it. I'll screenshots later

Don't care.

Free_is_better wrote: Check out the other huddle now. I just got done spamming it. I'll screenshots later

Where did you spam at??

The free section and the for sale section

I don't have an account to see anymore. I don't feel like registering again either.

I honestly don't think that "greed" drove this - more likely, survival. From my experience in dealing with companies in financial trouble, I'm going to speculate that Bucknuts is in serious financial hot water. I've seen companies in financial trouble follow the same behavior pattern several times.

I'm guessing that Bucknuts overpaid for the Huddle - the transaction went down at a time when internet ad revenues were at their peak. They've gone steadily downhill as the true benefit of web advertising has become better understood - and they have absolutely tanked in the last year.

It would make sense - the cash flow from the "one and done" membership wasn't that great (remember that the fee increased by about 50% a couple of years earlier?). The site may have been taken free to try and jump-start ad revenues. The Second Stringers program with Channel Four in Columbus was a disaster - I have no idea who paid whom what, if anything, for that little fandango- but it's odd that the monthly fee program hit ten days after the end of the regular HS football season. Apparently none of this worked - again, speculating, I think the monthly fee is a desperate attempt to generate some sort of ongoing cash flow for debt service or equipment replacement. The suddenness (and the timing so close to the end of the year) doesn't bode well at all.

Cat Food Flambe', Yes it was a survival decision. But I wonder how much of the financial sitation was market driven (reduced ad revenue) and how much was self-induced (paid too much for a site that really had no intrinsic value and/or increased expenditures due to poor spending decisions). They put a lot of money into "content" that wasn't really worth anything (remember, folks paid for the "premium" content), so that decision didn't generate much revenue. And the cost of creating that content is high.

They have to have a product offering beyond the opinion and postings of huddlers. Message boards just don't offer uniqueness unless there is specific content that can't be found elsewhere.


If their decision to purchase JJ was based on ad revenue potential, then they should have controlled costs and introduced content as they could afford it. If their decision to purchase was to charge folks for reading other's opinions.... bad idea. NO product there at all

a couple very good feline takes

It's that quality Hilliard educmacation!

Cat Food Flambe' wrote: It's that quality Hilliard educmacation!

FanOfCats should be so lucky!

We just do it gooder in Hiliard! Write Cat Food?

I love that they are going down right now. What they did was really ill-advised to say the least. The articles and magazine were beyond dumb, most people care only about regional sports and don't care about a school that they don't know about. They overshot their load so much this time and I love it. 12 bucks is not much but that is not the point at all. I can't wait now to see what happens, also the rules there were beyond stupid.

Yeah I love how they acted like "its ONLY $12!!"

Like, if someone came to your door and said "buy this bag of shit, its only $12, thats $1/month!!!" you would be like...."well its a pretty good deal, can't pass that up."

It's $12 all at once.... if only 20% of the active members bought into it that would be a significant cash infusion to say the least.

30,000 members (20%) X $12 is $360,000. I'm guessing they were banking on at least 20%! It was $1/month, $12/year, and $360,000 or more for them. Not insigificant. Don't insult me by acting like it was a nominal revenue generator!

How can they even think 20%. Only 3-4 % of thier members have more than 100 posts.

where do you get the 30k members from? no way they had that many active forum members. I bet it was under 5k.

30,000 sounds high. I'd guess more like 3,000.