Yahoo Targets CNET, will CNET survive?

It's like the Wild West in some of them. The finance forums are probably the worst. People get quite irate about loosing money, LOL. They have filters, but is proactive, you have to turn them on.

in case they shut this down and we all become refugees? In my brief look at them, none looked that appealing.

Oh well. Too much time on the computer anyway I guess.

I am signed up with one forum: ATI all-in-one video cards. When you post to the forum, the post shows up in your email a couple of days later. You've got to go from email to the Yahoo forum to respond.

Most of what comes through the forum is spam with some sort of sexual content. Call me for a good time, or visit my web site. That sort of thing. Pure trash and no policing.

Check out tek-tips.com for technology issues.

it pulls in the Flash ads revenue.

... of CNet's business decisions -- especially in light of some new competition.

Each "upgrade" of the forums has seemed to be to incorporate yet another layer of advertising which is the "pie" Yahoo would be eating into. Page clicks -- any page clicks -- are a big deal!

Right now: (rounding)
Speakeasy -- 181,750 posts
Computer Help -- 51,000
Computer Newbies -- 28,000
Virus & Security -- 75,750 (how I found ZDNet initially FWIW)
Windows XP -- 94,750

Even when I actively participated more in the help forums, I would usually open threads on an issue I could help with (or was looking for help on). I didn't do a lot of "reading" in the tech forums. Apparently, there are lots of people that read here every day that don't even post -- fair to assume far more than might read the other forums. And it seems most of the regulars here tend to read most of the threads even if they don't reply. That's a LOT of page clicks.

If the forums are worthwhile at all to CNet in terms of generating ad revenue (that is unclear), then the page hits generated in SE vs. the others would be foolish to toss away!

numbers of messages in a forum, not page clicks. I believe CNet management keeps track of 'page clicks' and does not reveal them. Page click would also include those people who are not members but click in look at something. The actual 'page click' would be an awful lot higher and not necessarily would SE be the leader. For instance, I was reading the 'help' type forums for almost a year in 1999, before joining membership in ZDNet and making a post.

PS, do you remember back when ZDNet used to post a list of the top forums in number of messages and also the 'Moderator of the Month'. It was a nip & tuck between the usual leader "Call for Help" and SE, and some people in SE would accuse others of making any excuse to make a post to jump up the number counting.

... the number of clicks here is far greater than in most of those forums.

Do you really think that as many people read all the posts in Computer Help as lurk here? I bet that if page clicks were published, instead of 2:1 for SE:WinXP, it would be closer to 10:1.

Now whether or not the forums as a whole are a crucial factor in the site traffic stats is unknown. But if they are enough to keep forums going, it would be a boneheaded business decision to drop the most popular of same.

People initially come to CNet for the Tech issues to read and some find the Tech Community Forums, and eventually may click on to SE. They may click on SE again and then more than once because of some of the subjects and characters that abound, or the soap bickering.

No, I do not, "think that as many people read all the posts in Computer Help as lurk here." You are again assuming what I post. In the past the ZDNet 'Call for Help' forum was always having more posts than SE. That has changed as is obvious, and probably because of the many other new forums that took some viewers from Computer Help and the Newbies forum. (BTW, CNet only changed the title of these forum from ZDNet to CNet in October 2003).

I would think people don't read all the posts in any forum. Sorry I just don't agree with your 10:1 guess, and since we are talking about clicks instead of what you thought were clicks, we cannot find out if your 10:1 holds any 'water' at all.

I don't see (or predict) any "boneheaded business decision to drop Speakeasy" based on number of posts or CLICKS.

... where I said that the amount that the forums contribute is an unknown. We've been told for a long time that the forums are a losing venture for quite some time now. But clearly the forum traffic is significant enough that a great many manhours have been expended to integrate advertisements with nitty gritty of the forum operations.

Exhibit ''A'' -- go into your browser options and set it to load images from the originating website only. Voila! The very images that make this forum even readable at all are gone. It's how they get you to accept some level of ads whether you like it or not.

Exhibit "B" -- watch that browser status bar while any single post is loaded, and/or wipe out your cookie and ad blocking rules and see how many times you are asked to accept/decline a cookie not related to CNet.

Exhibit ''C'' -- not as obvious or directly demonstrable, but consider, how many of the ''forum upgrades'' over the past few years have actually improved features? In the beginning, that was the big thing to make the forums functional at all. But lately, with each ''maintenance'' we get a slew of glitches with the message marking, etc. See Exhibit ''A''.

There's a 2:1 margin of posts in SE to WinXP. I obviously can't prove it, but a 5:1 ratio of numbers of people that have read each post is probably on the low end. Each post or read is a click. There are forums here with fewer than 1000 posts. Computer Help has apparently fallen FAR off its prior participation level. Perhaps CNet should have cared a bit more about some of the techie devotees that it p'd off over the years.

James' post was about advertising revenues and page clicks. IF the forums as a whole contribute to that, then SE contributes more than any other by a long shot.

I'd have to agree with you that Yahoo seems to look on forums as a business generator more than CNET has been willing to admit. It does seem CNET's appeal to the younger "gamer" community has been paying off for it, but that's also a fickle consumer to appeal to. I think JR's got a point in that probably more people who "click" in the SE forum are also contributors whereas many who click in Tech forums are doing a quick driveby looking for a solution to their problem. Some of those will then signup and ask about their problem if they can't find the answer. Many of them, not locating the exact solution to their problem will cruise other sides, impatient or with a need for a quick solution. I would suspect the percentage of posts to clicks is higher in SE than for most tech forums, whether this means any one forum by itself generates more clicks than SE, I have no clue.

most of the threads even if they don't reply. That's a LOT of page clicks.''

Certainly I do. And I ignore the ads, just as I do when watching TV. Yet TV survives barely.

And James D was the first to post about the keyed ad content on cnet; that's supposed to be worth something to the bottome line. I notice Google supplies such a service to other webmasters: Content-related ads down the right side of the page. Neat, but I ignore those, too.

"any page clicks" don't help, I'm told. The first entry to a portal is registered; the rest figure you're already captured. At least I think that's the case. If true it means that most of our time on SE or Virus or whatever generates no holy points to cnet.
Some others here may know more.

You mean they count number of threads and not number of posts? Looking at the software I don't see how they'd distinguish that.