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Archiver > STATE-COORD > 2008-03 > 1205109357


From:
Subject: Re: [STATE-COORD] Comments on banner
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 20:35:57 EDT


Hello,

This announcement is concerning me, on many levels.  It's not just the
banner. It's the potentially diminished identity that is USGW.

How about protecting OUR brand identity? We have customers, too! They may not
pay, but we attract not only researchers, but folks who want to give up a
portion of their free time to selflessly donate data and creative talent. What
about our *customer base?

Currently, we see this same angst with the pioneer content creators of
YouTube.com, who lived by the slogan, "Broadcast yourself."
Along came Google, purchasing YT from its Founders, for billions, and turning
what WAS a well of amateur entertainment, into a monster New Media arm of OLD
MEDIA, thus usurping the ones that "brung them to the dance."

For YT, entertainment is the carrot drawing users to the site (only recently
made possible by the cheap bandwidth, around the world).
For TGN and its marketing consortium--it's family history.

YT has begun to share revenue with carefully groomed content providers, whom
they call "Partners," but that's small potatoes compared to the real bucks in
it for google on YT: Harvested clicks and user data to be sold to marketing
wonks and their clients.

Is that what this is for TGN? For the clicks?

CNet wrote an article about the topic of data collection, almost three years
ago:
http://www.news.com/Google-balances-privacy,-reach/2100-1032_3-5787483.html

Here's Spectrum consortium brands--each with the synergy to serve one
another. TGN is a valued part of that hub.
http://www.spectrumequity.com/investments/index.html

Clearly, I don't blame Ancestry or Spectrum for this. They're doing their
jobs and doing it well. Yes--for some volunteers, staying on RW is the best
choice. Thanks, Rootsweb for your gift of 12 years of free space! 

But relationships are conditional and this recent move is BIG, IMO.  Is it
time to rethink alliances, before there is nothing left to offer our
contributors and future volunteers?

I'll look forward, as we move down the process, to the ADVISORY part of the
AB.

Thanks for listening.


Maureen Mead
USGenWeb Project ASC: rootsweb.com/~ctgenweb
USGenWeb Project CC Fairfield County, CT: rootsweb.com/~ctfairfi

----------------------------------


*********** BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE  ***********

On 3/4/2008 at 9:02 PM Tina S. Vickery <> wrote:

>Please forward to all USGenWeb Project lists.
>
>---
>
>To All USGenWeb Project members who host sites on TGN/RW ("RootsWeb"):
>
>TGN/RW ("RootsWeb") has implemented a policy change in
>which banners are to be placed on all TGN/RW hosted
>websites.  The USGenWeb Advisory Board contacted RootsWeb
>in regard to their plan to install banners on their
>webspace and have negotiated a banner specific to The
>USGenWeb Project that will be placed on the national pages
>of The USGenWeb Project. While these negotiations were
>ongoing, TGN/RW postponed applying the banners to sites of
>the USGenWeb Project to work on the concept of USGenWeb
>having a custom banner.
>
>The banner that we have negotiated identifies the USGenWeb
>Project as being hosted by RootsWeb and RootsWeb as a
>community of The Generation Network.
>
>The banners are viewable here:
>
>http://www.usgenweb.com/images/rootswebbanner/default1.jpg [default one]
>http://www.usgenweb.com/images/rootswebbanner/default2.jpg [default two]
>http://www.usgenweb.com/images/rootswebbanner/default3.jpg [default three]
>http://www.usgenweb.com/images/rootswebbanner/custom.jpg [custom to
>USGenWeb Project]
>

<snip>



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