Two renowned New York bulletin-board systems, Echo and New York Online, have started taking baby steps toward making themselves over, shopping their skills to businesses and onto the Web.
While the move doesn't signal the end of the local BBS, it suggests the BBSes themselves are recognizing the survival of online communities means both demographic and financial diversity.
On Monday, Echo founder Stacy Horn established the company's Online Community Consulting group, which will nurture in-house conferences for corporations. With intranet hype reaching a fever pitch, "there is just too much money to be made to not think about [consulting]," says Horn. "So many people call and ask, 'How do you do this?' It got to the point when I couldn't turn the money away."
Horn's consulting group will supplement corporate intranets that already have powerful infrastructures but no atmosphere. "Everything that would have happened in a series of meetings could happen online," says Horn. Using its seven-year experience as a BBS, Echo will set up the system, and even pick "ringers" to foster conversations in the rooms when topics get bland - "like a hostess at a party who goes around tweaking conversation," said Horn, who set up online conferences while working for Mobil in the late '80s.
The decision to create the consulting group comes as subscriber numbers have fallen off, says Horn. But the BBS continues to be the central concern for Echo, and Horn hopes that the new work - which would be hosted at Echo itself - may help to drive its membership up from 3,500 to their goal of 10,000.
BBS New York Online made a more dramatic move earlier this year, shifting 90 percent of its business to Web-site development for companies like Pfizer. The BBS, which started in 1993, currently breaks even with 1,500 subscribers, "but it's not like we're trying to grow the business," says founder Omar Wasow. "We don't promote it anymore."
Adopting the idea of online communities into corporate business plans has cast New York Online as a Web development shop says Wasow, attracting well-known clients like Consumer Reports. "We talk about our lineage [as a BBS] because it helps," Wasow notes. "But if we can't do good Web development, it's not worth talking to us."
Other sites made the move much earlier and perhaps more wisely. Online music resource SonicNet, created in 1994, switched from a BBS to a Web site after a year and a half, and president Nicholas Butterworth now says the company should have moved earlier.
"As much as I love the culture of BBS, you provide an aggregated service - software, troubleshooting, and upgrades - all things that have nothing to do with content and communities," says Butterworth. "You're competing against people who are far more funded than you are, like AOL, Access software, and Netscape [who provide the interface software]."
For many, alternative outlets for community are growing exponentially, including the dynamic artists' resources, World Wide Web Artist's Consortium listserv. "A mailing list can take on the role that a BBS used to play," Butterworth says. "Echo is not the only place to be online."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
