Back to the Basics Please

Important Announcement

The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More

The following is a thread I started at the "Community Feedback" site. After reading the Multiply Terms of Use, the language does not support organizations or members/groups supporting organizations or offering/suggesting their represented services.

MSN Groups told us that this new service would accept the MSN Terms of Use as it applied to their Groups; however, Multiply seems to only have a desire for casual "talk". Don't people have that with e-mail and Instant Messenger services? It seems I may be reading this legal jargon incorrectly hence the post below. If in fact I am perceiving their terms of use correctly, they will alienate themselves from all of us on MSN who have public outreach sites. They will be out of business within a year if this is the case I'm sure.

Indeed, if this is the case we will have to put our thinking cap on. Simply building a site is something I can accomplish but building message boards is a hairy tedious process. Migrating our history (even though MSN lost a-lot of ours) is merely impossible. So, indeed if Multiply won't take our site based on the type of site that it is, we will lose our site history. HOW FRIGGIN SAD IS THAT?!!?!

I will start building www.backtothebasicsplease.com by the middle of November. I don't know what kind of snags I will run into; therefore, we need something! Perhaps the MySpace profile can serve this purpose. There are a-lot of site options there. Unfortunately, Yahoo Groups may not be a viable option. In addition, Yahoo is on the verge of being acquired and dropping their "Groups" section all together as well. I'll look into this more tomorrow.

Have you looked at Google groups fearless leader. While there up and coming there may be more in it for a while.

Michael I was thinking the same thing. I really like google.

Dude I know you are going a little insane

with all the group stuff. So I'll look into the google groups this weekend. .

Also just keep in mind sometimes we have to let go of the some of past in order to create a new future.

Well thanks Eddie

And, I am going insane, I have worked for it and deserve it but it is not because of these groups

Perhaps we'll have to let go of our history but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. We're you around when MSN lost four years? There was hell to pay!!

If my house is on fire, I'm the one who will risk their lives running back in for the scrapbook. So, I will not take the idea so easily and I don't feel like dealing with the "oh well/look to the future" philosophy at present. If it happens, I will BITCH! No one can deprive that from me either

So, with that being said I guess if Multiply won't take us it is suitable to look for yet another group for those who do not like the MySpace or Facebook sites. Although, it would really be easier until the main site is built for everyone to move to our MySpace profile

Or Facebook in February, though I'll admit I don't like the whole Facebook thing myself.

I will start on the new site next month. It will be connected with the best suited message board service or blog that we find. Creating message boards and supplying the bandwidth to hold those messages is too expensive.

To give you an idea, there will be a main site linked to a free message board service. This is what I'm working toward.

Thanks for your thoughts Michael

The Google Group is on its way to being built. Thanks to Ed

and after looking at Google briefly this may be the way to go.

We will introduce the Google Group when it is finished. Furthermore, this may be the forums that we use once the main site is built. We shall see.

Finally, I was quite impressed with the sophistication of "Google Groups" after Ed pointed out what we could do, including RSS Feed capability. Though Google does not offer the aesthetic appeal that we have enjoyed with MSN we will make that up with the webpages built at www.backtothebasicsplease.com.

So screw this Multiply.com if they don't want to play

We may lose our message history but "whatever" I guess.

<STYLE> .ExternalClass {color:#000;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;padding:0;height:100%;font-size:12px;background-color:#f4f6f8;background:none;} .ExternalClass a, .ExternalClass a:link, .ExternalClass a:visited {color:#0b5eb4;text-decoration:none;} </STYLE>

Service has posted a new personal message.

Manage alerts settings

<STYLE> .ExternalClass table.EC_itemtitle {background-color:#ca3333;} </STYLE>

Re:

<NOBR>Oct 27, '08 8:57 AM</NOBR>
for users brandflake301 and service

Hi Brandon,

Our groups feature is an ideal place for organizations to communicate with one another. That language is under the heading of "non commercial use" in our Terms of Service, and that is all it's referring to. As long as an organization is not using Multiply to spam our users or to defraud them in any way, there is nothing to worry about.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Curtis

The following was posted in the MSN Community Feedback site with no answers to follow. Will you tell me and others if you will work with public outreach programs?

Thankyou,

Brandon Bennett
[email protected]

After briefly reviewing the Multiply.com Terms of Use, it seems they do not accept "organizations" or organizations that simply use the message boards as a means of communication for their corporate websites.

Does this mean that those of us who have used the MSN Group message boards for outreach purposes will no longer be able to? Does this also mean that "meaningful" correspondence and newsletters that serve to assist those who need assistance for a variety of reasons will not be allowed at Multiply?

Simply put, does anyone know if Multiply will open their arms to public outreach organizations at all or if I am reading correctly, "they will simply leave us in the dust"

If their scope is simply to offer a casual atmosphere for "friends" to talk without accepting the roundtable of organizations that contribute to these groups, the competition will swallow them whole.

But enough of that, I simply need to know if my organization will be supported by this new service or if we need to prepare for a different service....If they are going to migrate our message history, it is really a mass majority of messages from professional and non-professional services. I am not the only "Group" of my kind and "we" as a segment of the MSN Groups need to know if Multiply will support public outreach organizations or not. The language seems to say that they won't

Thanks for your help

Brandon

Add a Comment

Copyright 2008 Multiply Inc, 6001 Park of Commerce, Boca Raton, FL 33487, USA
Stop e-mails, view our privacy policy, or report abuse: click here

With the latest being posted by Multiply and obviously I was not reading the language correctly, we will allow the migration to Multiply.com and see how it goes. We will lose nothing by doing this and hopefully preserve our message history. I'm thinking we'll start the migration December 1st and keep the MSN Group until MSN closes it down February 21st.

This will give us ample time to both figure out if Multiply will work and allow the acceptable level of glitches to be worked out.

Make no mistake though, that we will continue to pursue the Google Group. Ed is working very hard on this and Google provides another audience that we may not be able to reach through Facebook, MySpace, or Multiply.

So, in the end we will be networking with four free services; Multiply, Google, Myspace, and Facebook. Then we will build our corporate website, www.backtothebasicsplease.com We will then decide what free message/blog service serves the best direct outlet for the corporate website but we will keep all of our groups and profiles.

From there, we will seek people to work with us on building a corporate license/profile. More on that later.

None of these current activities will distract from our ambitious building of the Meth Project and seeking other talent that will help us build a better outreach coalition.

There will be more to come as some things are being developed as we speak as well as a choice for another assistant manager.

Brandon, I played around Mutiply since I seem to be still stuck on the couch, lol and I think that it is going to work for the group, thought I would just give you my opinion so you aren't stressing so much!

Thanks Sophie

& I hope you get better soon!

You've been down for at least a week

Not stressing so much. Not about the sites that is. My job, my health, now that's a completely different story

The possibilties just got a bit more interesting!! I think I've just opened Pandora's box, lol

According to many at the Community Feedback site and after looking at this host myself it may be at least an equal or better service to move to. Perhaps both?

Anyhow, once again I'd like your opinions. Look at this host and let me know what you think? http://www.aimoo.com/ Perhaps we can migrate to Multiply on December 1st & Aimoo on Jan 1st? All the while the MSN Group will stay until it closes Feb 21st. No harm done and we can find out what works better

Important Announcement The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
Back to the Basics Please	[email protected]