Important Announcement

Hiya HC...

Just bear one thing in mind though... those of us that actively contribute in the forum are very much a minority of the total membership... in the bigger scheme of things, although we are the most vociferous we are also the most expendable... just do the math and you'll see what I mean.

The new owners will have seen that there are a lot of inactive members out there and by greatly improving the features of SH they can attract them with the benefits which the members will gladly pay for... more chat rooms for different interests... better photo ads section... Lots of members + relatively small fee = nice grin on face.

As a self employed person I cannot criticise that at all... good luck to them... all I'm pointing out is that although we were/are doing a lot of shouting we are the least of their worries... as the real money is in the other parts of the site. I sincerely believe that if they removed the forum sections it would not affect their future cash flow one iota... I don't think that is in their plans but if it got to be too much trouble then who could blame them for removing it.

We have a simple choice... we continue here and as long as things are not changed too detrimentally then we are going to be happy... with regard to munches etc... we are innovative enough to rebrand if necessary... and carry on with the same rules.

If things become too unpalatable then a leader amongst us will finally have enough and will create another forum that will cater for what we like about this site and that is chatting, sharing, meeting, exchanging jokes and just general all round silliness...

All I'm saying is let's not get too inflated with our own importance on SH... I do believe we are relatively small fry in their bigger scheme of things... just a pragmatic and hopefully realistic POV... awaits brickbats...

Hugggggggggggs and and happy Saturday's

Wibbly
xxx

Astonishing news.... absolutely astonishing.

The charm of SH is that it was a free community on the ideas and practices of those that many other sites have easily milked money from in the past.

The "upgrade for one year" is business speak for "help us make a mint and then you're on your arse".

Being an amatuer website developer myself, the only thing that has stopped me creating my own free swinging site as a hobby was that there was absolutely no point when there was already one in existence that did as good a job as you could wish.

Swinger paysites start off one of three ways.

A) Free to all and then gradual implementation of paysite system. (e.g whats happening here)

or

B) The owners create a load of fake accounts on their recently opened site to entice customers to pay out, and eventually the community comes about when so many mugs eventually join.

or

C) A "first 1000 people free" system to build up a core and then charge afterwards.

There is no other site in existence on the internet at all that compares with Swinging Heaven, and theres a reason for it - it has a genuine "good feel factor" to it where people are here to enjoy sex, enjoy the community and enjoy discussion.

To believe that making it a corporation won't change much and will be better is naive - no other website has been made "better" than SH despite being paysites - all the privileges we need are already here and will be lost in a years time anyway.

To the new owners - you really will have to tread water lightly because it will be very very easy for any number of "techies" on this site to create a "clone site" within a matter of hours - the only thing that has stopped people in the past is that they've had no need to!

My prediction - they'll make an absolute bomb for 6 months with increased advertising meaning that SH will become the number 1 swinging paysite, the core membership won't matter anymore because they've already achieved absolutely everything they've needed by having a new "paid" core membership, and we'll either have to shell out after 12 months (not bloody likely) or find somewhere else.

I hope i'm wrong, even though i know i'm not - i'm gutted and i'm not a "full-time" SH'er so to speak, so i feel really really sorry for the likes of Bluexxx and Jags (well all the mods) who have been dumped into this without any notice.

It's a strange corporate takeover from people who couldn't give a flying crap about swinging - the reason i know is because more than once i've had the thought "ya know, a huge core membership with devoted 'disciples'... if Mark turned this into a paid venture he'd make a bomb!" - i'm a bloody swinger and i've had that idea!!!

It's like a swinging club suddenly being taken over by EasyJet and becoming EasySwing.... or EagerSwing... EagerSlut... i'm confused!

Anyway i had to add my rant to this - and final note; whereas everybodies worried - don't be. If push comes to shove people will create a new site and transfer the whole thing over piece by piece - it's literally take a day or so to do!

T & L xxx

Day 2, and for those still complaining about the new ownership...... Just remember that it was Mark who sold the site to them. I don't think he would have sold for the profit. If Mark trusted them to take good care of his creation and to maintain it's success, then I will too.

Good Morning All,

We have been following this since we received a phone call last night telling us what had happened. It took us hours to read through the whole thread and did not want to post a hasty knee-jerk reply.

I lot of people’s statements have the same view as us, we don’t like the idea the SH has been sold and you are about to start earning money off the communities back.

Whatever way you put, or dress it up, this is exactly what you will be doing. You may have bought the site off Mark, but as said before, the community is SH, which means you have bought us, without our knowledge or our permission.

So far a lot of people are feeling hurt over this take over and a lot of our friends are angry with the way that it has been handled.

Why is it that a number of the post’s in this thread have broken AUP rules, but their threads have not been edited or removed.

We have noticed that one thread has already been removed because it broke AUP rules, having seen a copy of this I can understand why, but it should not have been singled out, just because it was on the extreme side. Under these circumstances everyone has a right to view their opinion.

Somewhere amongst the mass pages of this thread the new owners have said (cant remember the words exactly ) These were Mark’s words and not ours. If this is the case the AUP/Chatroom rules were Mark’s and the Mod’s just enforced them, which they did very well and to the best of their ability.

You have not come along and chosen which parts of the site you want to enforce and which parts you want to rip out. (You can do this as you have bought the rights to do so.), but would have thought under the changes you would have given some lee way to allow the SH community to voice their opinion, whatever way they wish, and considering that Elliot broke AUP rule by swearing and that was not edited or deleted it does not show that the new owners have any idea of what they are actually doing, or even know the rules of this site, and if they do then they are choosing to break their own rules already.

We know that it was a Mod from the site that decided the post should be removed, but it was just a case of someone who cares a lot about the site and the community voicing their opinion, be it rather strongly.

As for everything else, what will be will be.

Just to make you aware there will be a couple of polls that might appear to be controversial going up by Mr Tigs but its not like controversial posts/threads have not gone up before, unfortunately on this occasion peoples nerves are very raw, but they will be within AUP rules, but the new owners are not going to like it FACT, they may have bought the site but they have not bought the right to tell us what we can and cannot say, as long as it is within AUP rules. So unless these have been changed overnight and if this is the case, the company that now own SH should have informed the community personally.

Hay Ho, been members now for well over a year and this is the biggest post we have ever done

P.S. Any Bi-Fems fancy a shag

hi all

i've only just read whats going on!

I know i don't post often, But we have two or three options

1 we can see hows its goes?

2 We can leave and find another site?

3 We get a groups of us and setup a site like it was?

4 We can work with Elliot and his team to keep the site how we want it and have the best of both worlds?

Whats your veiw on it yes we all nervious about what will happen but ain the mean time lets do what we set out to do by signing on to this sita !! Have Fun with Each other
Thats i think at the moment

Thanks Nights

They have more idea about the 'swinging scene' ....or at least commercial swinging sites than they seemed prepared to admit at the outset. Some of their other nonswinging related websites have odd links to swinging information sites ....that ultimately lead to a uk swinging site that claims to have over 100,000 members and many of the new improved fetaures that we're being promised.

Last edited by on 19th Nov 2005 - 12:52pm; edited 1 time in total

Good day, there is a lot of points being raised here again that have been covered at least a few times in this thread.

hope youve sobered up you drunken sot......

if you dont remember you were offering your services to all the guys on your last thread last night.............

(listens for the clamour as martin reviews his last post last night and sighs with relief )


good mornin too ya

woah martin....

some re still just getting to know......

i think the locked threads a good idea for telling people yet to find out the news and just defer perople there......

keep your chin up and we'll all see what happens......

meanwhile we can continue to dog you on this thread lol