Jim Boykin, an old time SEO previously known at WeBuildPages and now his company rebranded to Internet Marketing Ninjas has purchased all of Developer Shed, including SEO Chat.
SEO Chat was my first real SEO community. I may have posted at other forums prior, but SEO Chat was the first community I stuck with early on. SEO Chat was founded by Darrin Ward back in 2002 and then in the summer of 2003 he sold SEO Chat to Developer Shed. Developers Shed eventually sold it off to Ziff Davis Enterprise.
Since it was originally sold off to Developer Shed the forum lost its flare and many of the original SEOs who were part of that community left, including the founder - Darrin Ward. Darrin tried to start a new forum named SEO Town in 2004 but it did not take off.
In any event, Jim Boykin, the second member of SEO Chat when it first launched just bought SEO Chat and the whole Developer Shed network from Ziff Davis.
Jim said:
A few weeks ago, something I had wished for, for years, came true when I bought the entire Developer Shed network of sites... and I'm so excited!
His plans are bold, they include:
- Updating all sites to a much newer version of vBulletin.
- Each site will get a new homepage layout to encourage people to participate in the forums.
- Building up the Twitter and Facebook communities for each site and integrating these into the forums.
- Fixing, removing, and adding new tools for the sites.
- Removing all advertising areas that interfere with the usability of the site.
- Ordering shirts to send to those who have contributed to these communities over the years.
- He has read several threads in the forums where the users give ideas to make these sites better, and will be incorporating many of these ideas over the next few months and with the redesign of the sites.
- There are several more things that we'll be doing, all geared towards making the community stronger and better.
Do you think forums are on a come back or what do you think Jim's intentions are?
It is awesome to get SEO Chat back in the hands of an SEO who is part of the community! Thanks Jim!
Forum discussion at SEO Chat and WebmasterWorld.
