Yeah, I’m sure Google’s probably aren’t as low as Fastmail’s were. I don’t know if they still are that low, but it was something ridiculous like 2k emails per day or 100 messages per hour at FastMail, which were both very easy to hit with even a very low-volume company account.
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Oh welcome @IncogNet @manu @mwt @jrheiland 
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Yeah so… I saw that.
The fuck? I mean sure you want growth on LET/B especially since you probably want more $$$ to support operations. But is that really the right direction?
This is my biggest question about this whole thing… I’ve lost count of how many times Jbiloh has stated the many improvements that have been made under his more recent stewardship but I’m a little confused as to what those are in reality.
I don’t consider backend changes to be improvements - so server changes or software updates (i.e. bring vanilla up to a recent version, adding a plug in or updating wordpress). These are a part of operating a public site and were long overdue after the years of neglect under the colocrossing era.
Raindog has done some interviews and there’s some “how tos” that get posted on the main site periodically. However, LowEndAdmin used to publish how tos back in the day and it stopped when colocrossing acquired the site. So if anything Jbiloh is just bringing back something that he (in a round about way) stopped putting effort into in the first place…
So in summary, if this provider fee is simply about monetisation that’s fine - it’s his site and he’s free to do what he pleases. Though, I think he should be open about it and call it what it is.
I would trust Jarland to be honest if he did this, and I am pretty sure the same could be said for Mason/Mikho on LES. I don’t know why LET always has to be cloak and dagger, you’d think given the amount of fucking bullshit that’s gone down there over the years people would have learned something lol.
Sorry for the essay x
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Fair enough.
I agree with your sentiment but also LEB/LET doesn’t seem to have any capable developer working with them to support in their coding-based endeavors, which is why they instead need to hire someone to get it done. They’re a bunch of tech infrastructure people, not developers.
I also think that they’re trying to aggressively grow their content strategy. Yeah LEA published tutorials and how-tos on top of offers, but LEB at the time (from what I recall) was more of a passion project. LEB has long gone from a passion project to a $$ generating machine, where now they’re hiring people to write for them and maintain it. Jon doesn’t write articles or contribute regular content, he just owns the keys to everything.
Also, I think they’re trying to grow the video content space. Personally for me (this isn’t a dig at anyone, just simply airing my own opinion) I do think video-format can be a major growth avenue for them, but not with the current formula. Making videos are a fair amount of work, but I think they need to continue experimenting and, honestly, I don’t think anyone really cares about most of the “industry news” that gets talked on it. I also really like the creativity coming in to their comic-series but again, it’s something I like the idea of, but it’s not something I actually enjoy as a piece of content. Basically what I’m saying is, I think they need to continue polishing and experimenting with those two content avenues and I think there’s growth opportunities there but in their current format, they’re pretty cringe.
Their focus and target should be to grow LEB. Make it more useful and interesting for people to come back to regularly instead of just another website posting offers. I’m sure LET gets significantly more traffic than LEB. We see the value in LET as (in my opinion), they’re selling access to LEB as basically free. You can submit offers to LEB and they’ll pick what they want (curator side). But if you want LET access you need to pay. It’s basically “here’s a start to what LE* can offer” and then “you want full access? Pay 100/6 months”. Which again, I don’t think it’s bad but it definitely shows that even on their management team they see LEB as an entrance point and LET as the real cheese. So they want to grow LEB to capture more people and funnel them to LET.
At the end of the day, LEB/LET is not really going anywhere. Unless they pull another “Actually turns out Racknerds owns LET” (aka what ColoCrossing did initially with Chief), I think the community has a lot of resilience and will bounce back sooner or later.
Now a competing community focused on the “lowend” sector would be useful. A better product, a more useful “funneling” avenue, and a properly curated and managed community would be the only reason LEB/LET ends. But, I don’t have the time for that nor the bandwidth right now. Now can HostedTalk capture that? Honestly probably not. Hostedtalk isn’t positioning themselves in that area and honestly, it’s a bit hard to understand where HT is located in the scope of everything. At the end of the day, it still very much feels like a boy’s club here with the “regulars”.
Essay essay essay. Writing a lot. Anyways that’s my thoughts. It’s Monday morning.
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Just a quick note.
I know I basically said I didn’t like their current/new content strategy. What I meant to say was you gotta learn how to walk before you can run. The current iteration shows they know how to walk. What I want to see is them running.
I have mad respect to raindog and his work on these projects. It’s not an easy feat and taking the risk and initiative to get this done speaks volume to his skillsets. I think if they can expand the team to support Raindog and his content-making strategies, then I think they might have a solid piece of gold.
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That’s why Not_Oles was hired.
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Yep I read that! Excited to see how they grow it with the increased bandwidth. But also the cynical asshole in me sometimes thinks “we’ve already tried a lot of these before. Why will this iteration be different?”
Again, that’s the cynical asshole in me, so not really how I think about it. I do believe they have a good formula going and I believe Not_Oles joining the team will improve their content.
I am pretty much done with the other place. Will rarely post there.
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