VerticalScope Inc Headed toward Bankruptcy?

I would appreciate an introduction to a VerticalScope team member. .. really curious how they run their forums. Do they attend any events? I’d probably fly halfway around the world to meet them at a business event or two.

It’s easy to criticize someone, and even easier to mismanage a forum you’ve purchased (I know how that feels). Their experience is invaluable.
Mismanaging every forum they have ever acquired, and driving away activity and people from successful communities to smaller ones is not something I would consider invaluable, other than learning from their mistakes.

By almost every metric (community, growth, income) they have never really been that successful, and their business has mostly been propped up by investments that are now gone or disappearing.

The sad reality is that taking over management of a community is very easy, and that is to not try to force what you think the community should be on to it. VerticalScope usually comes in and adds their Fora platform which not many people like, changes the monetization strategy very quickly (which makes no one happy) and forces new rules and management strategies. You cannot simply apply the same template to every community and expect them to succeed or remain successful, because each community has its own identity 🤷‍♂️.
 
.. I don't anything about how they operate their business, and don't have opinion about them.

What I am sure of - they have a wealth of experience both good and painful. Super interested in this.

.. I own a niche forum (close to my heart - a forum for Latvian webmasters) that I bought in 2015 after it had been closed by the owner/founder for a while after trying to make it a blog-link-farm cashcow. .. still can't get it back on its feet + made tonnes of mistakes (1 of them > trying to run it on bbpress).. then, bought a dead forum last April - traffic and posts are coming back.. and, have almost tanked another forum by introducing too tight rules..

there are solo-owners who will almost never try anything new (you don't fix what isn't broken), and then there are owners who have 3-4 forums + passion for their industry and also try to run these forums as businesses (I am the 2nd one).
 
I stepped quietly away from The Admin Zone (TAZ) sometime ago. I assume Vertical Scope still owns it but the last time I looked it was completely dead which is almost certainly due to a complete lack of management.

Not even been able to access it for the last week, maybe its finally died for good.
 
Not even been able to access it for the last week, maybe its finally died for good.
Sounds like you are banned because the site loads for me.
Screenshot_20250506_175145_Edge.webp
 
Sounds like you are banned because the site loads for me.
Given I'm on the staff, thats rather unlikely.

Unfortunately not, it's back up offering the world 'Cantilever Paper Slitting Machines for Seamless Paper Converting' :rolleyes:
Given the response, I investigated further.
It seems to have been some issue with Firefox site storage.
I deleted that from my profile folder and now its loading ok.
 
It seems to have been some issue with Firefox site storage.
I've had similar issues with Firefox, sites becoming slow and unreachable. Anyway TAZ is still advertising Cantilever Paper Slitting Machines whatever they may be which says a lot about the lack of management there.
 
Its clearly something to do with the site.
I logged in and within 2 minutes it broke FF again, now I just get "409 Conflict" responses again.
I did manage to remove that Spam post before it died again.

Management ?
There really isnt much any more, the admin is rarely seen.
The new registrations queue often hits over 100, I more or less gave up.
Since its now breaking my browser, I guess I'll bother even less, since I cant ....
 
Its clearly something to do with the site.
I logged in and within 2 minutes it broke FF again, now I just get "409 Conflict" responses again.
I did manage to remove that Spam post before it died again.

Management ?
There really isnt much any more, the admin is rarely seen.
The new registrations queue often hits over 100, I more or less gave up.
Since its now breaking my browser, I guess I'll bother even less, since I cant ....
How much do you get paid to moderate a website like that? Almost sounds like your account is "discouraged" lol
 
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