Sunday, January 31, 2010
Transcript of eHow's Video Blog Response About the UK Site and Earnings Issues
3:25 PM | 
Posted by
jp
eHow recently responded to its members regarding their use of member articles for a six month period to build their UK website. They are now calling this website the "beta" site. I imagine there are legal implications if they do not admit that there was testing going on. But, I am no lawyer. For anyone who does not have speakers or who just wants to read what the reply was I have transcribed it. I draw different meanings from things after I hear them a few times and especially once I read them.
What do you think of eHow finally absolutely admitting that the earnings drop was indeed caused by the UK website? Does this close the door on the issue?
The following is a transcript of eHow's video blog response about the UK site and earnings issues:
Hi eHow community. This is Rich the eHow community manager. I know many of you had some questions about the eHow UK website. I thought the best person who can answer this question is our general manager here whose name is Greg..um..beforehand, I kinda want to get some tidbit um surrounding your history with eHow.
Greg: sure yeah. I know you’re in the community every day and you’re really the voice for our community and I have been working for eHow for four years now. I was actually the first full time hire by our parent company Demand Media purchased eHow back in 2006 and it’s been fantastic to watch the journey. Um. We’ve really grown into a site where we have millions of readers coming every month and a lot of that is because of our community and the articles that they’ve written and contributed…so uh, I’d be happy to answer questions.
R - Great. Um so like one of the main questions I keep seeing on the forums is uh why did we uh release this uh UK beta website?
G - uh yeah no that’s great question. We really followed the same tradition that we followed that we release every product here uh at eHow. We’re trying to build the best user experience. We want to get feedback on new products uh that’s why we launched the test beta site. We’re doing the same thing on mobile right now. We just released the new android application and we’re really getting feedback from our mobile users and we just launched another project which is eHow logic tool [not sure right name 1:12] and that’s more of an application so it really came down to us to uh thinking about hey we’re a big website in the US and we want to expand internationally and uh our friends over in the UK are a great place because they’re reading English articles and we started with that and uh we got a lot of feedback.
R - Great. Um It’s good to hear um another like second question I hear a lot is and I think is like the one I hear the most is
G - Sure
R - did the um UK um website, this beta website that we have, did it somehow impact the user earnings ?
G - Yeah uh that’s a great question. I know there’s been a lot of chatter about that and yes the uh the our beta UK website did actually impact the earnings and we value our community a lot and we’re going to go ahead and compensate our users for that so I know they’ve been quite vocal about that and um I saw a couple of posts that you responded to you know at the time we launched the beta UK site we didn’t have the ability to automatically pay our members every month like we do in the US um but we’ve gone back and we’ve generously estimated uh those earnings and we’ll be paying out those earnings uh with January’s payment early February.
R - sweet I think that they would uh that’s some good news. I’m pretty sure that they’ll be happy about that um so this is our like first video and it’s you know just something
G - yeah
R - a good opportunity if you have anything else to tell the community
G - yeah no I love it. I think this is a great format to talk with our users and reaching out and uh I hope we do more of these. Um it’s really been just fantastic over the um past four years watching our little website turn into quite a big website. A lot of that is because of our community and really the passion that our members have and uh to be there every day and to be involved in the dialogue and to be creating articles and information that millions of people are searching for and helping them complete their every day projects so um we’re going to continue to fulfill that mission and uh we really look forward to our community to be a huge part of that.
R - sweet. You know I really think definitely has a great format for us to like get the community to get some insight into what’s going on at eHow and I think we should probably do more of these video blogs and I’m looking forward to doing more of these and telling the community about what’s going on at eHow and uh just want to say to the community as well that uh Julie and I we’re always available on the forums um if you have any questions we’re there to answer those questions for you um if you want to write or message us and ask us like any questions about the site or it you know any future like product releases or you know just get some sort of like insight into what’s going on the site you’re more that welcome you know to message us um but uh thanks for tuning in and we hope that when we post up our next video blog that you’ll tune in as well. Thanks.
What do you think of eHow finally absolutely admitting that the earnings drop was indeed caused by the UK website? Does this close the door on the issue?
The following is a transcript of eHow's video blog response about the UK site and earnings issues:
Hi eHow community. This is Rich the eHow community manager. I know many of you had some questions about the eHow UK website. I thought the best person who can answer this question is our general manager here whose name is Greg..um..beforehand, I kinda want to get some tidbit um surrounding your history with eHow.
Greg: sure yeah. I know you’re in the community every day and you’re really the voice for our community and I have been working for eHow for four years now. I was actually the first full time hire by our parent company Demand Media purchased eHow back in 2006 and it’s been fantastic to watch the journey. Um. We’ve really grown into a site where we have millions of readers coming every month and a lot of that is because of our community and the articles that they’ve written and contributed…so uh, I’d be happy to answer questions.
R - Great. Um so like one of the main questions I keep seeing on the forums is uh why did we uh release this uh UK beta website?
G - uh yeah no that’s great question. We really followed the same tradition that we followed that we release every product here uh at eHow. We’re trying to build the best user experience. We want to get feedback on new products uh that’s why we launched the test beta site. We’re doing the same thing on mobile right now. We just released the new android application and we’re really getting feedback from our mobile users and we just launched another project which is eHow logic tool [not sure right name 1:12] and that’s more of an application so it really came down to us to uh thinking about hey we’re a big website in the US and we want to expand internationally and uh our friends over in the UK are a great place because they’re reading English articles and we started with that and uh we got a lot of feedback.
R - Great. Um It’s good to hear um another like second question I hear a lot is and I think is like the one I hear the most is
G - Sure
R - did the um UK um website, this beta website that we have, did it somehow impact the user earnings ?
G - Yeah uh that’s a great question. I know there’s been a lot of chatter about that and yes the uh the our beta UK website did actually impact the earnings and we value our community a lot and we’re going to go ahead and compensate our users for that so I know they’ve been quite vocal about that and um I saw a couple of posts that you responded to you know at the time we launched the beta UK site we didn’t have the ability to automatically pay our members every month like we do in the US um but we’ve gone back and we’ve generously estimated uh those earnings and we’ll be paying out those earnings uh with January’s payment early February.
R - sweet I think that they would uh that’s some good news. I’m pretty sure that they’ll be happy about that um so this is our like first video and it’s you know just something
G - yeah
R - a good opportunity if you have anything else to tell the community
G - yeah no I love it. I think this is a great format to talk with our users and reaching out and uh I hope we do more of these. Um it’s really been just fantastic over the um past four years watching our little website turn into quite a big website. A lot of that is because of our community and really the passion that our members have and uh to be there every day and to be involved in the dialogue and to be creating articles and information that millions of people are searching for and helping them complete their every day projects so um we’re going to continue to fulfill that mission and uh we really look forward to our community to be a huge part of that.
R - sweet. You know I really think definitely has a great format for us to like get the community to get some insight into what’s going on at eHow and I think we should probably do more of these video blogs and I’m looking forward to doing more of these and telling the community about what’s going on at eHow and uh just want to say to the community as well that uh Julie and I we’re always available on the forums um if you have any questions we’re there to answer those questions for you um if you want to write or message us and ask us like any questions about the site or it you know any future like product releases or you know just get some sort of like insight into what’s going on the site you’re more that welcome you know to message us um but uh thanks for tuning in and we hope that when we post up our next video blog that you’ll tune in as well. Thanks.
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2 comments:
Thanks for this, JP.
Now if eHow would stop banning people for asking where the UK site is located (in the US--always has been) and stop pretending they didn't manipulate the SEO on the UK articles, maybe we'll get somewhere.
I like that you put "Beta" in quotes, BTW. Because it wasn't "Beta" when they were using it to steal from their members.
Good job on the transcript. Thanks again.
Thanks for the transcript. I agree with the other comment. Sounds like eHow bull-pucky! eHow got caught with their paws in the cookie jar...
They have managed to tarnish their reputation and I highly doubt they will ever regain the trust. Isn't the TOS the same...so, what stops them from repeating this in the future? Nothing that I can see.
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