[pianotech] real costs of running a listserv list

[Jim Moy]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote:

> On 2/27/2013 3:10 PM, Paul McCloud wrote:
>
>>  And if it's only $50/mo. plus volunteers, what in
>> the world is the problem with having both HL and the old system
>> running side by side?
>>
>
> As I've said, the only thing that connects for me is that it's a personal
> vendetta of some sort, or somehow threatens someone's self image. It's
> something petty and glandular.


I've hesitated to bring it up, because I'm afraid people will take it the
wrong way, but people keep asking, so I'll add my 2¢. It makes perfect
sense to shut down the current pianotech and move it to HL. It's what I
might do were I running PTG info-tech, though I hope I would perform better
in the execution.

The reason is eyeballs and clicks. That's the modern currency. Which, as
Apple, Google, and Facebook have proven, translates directly, and rapidly,
into old world currency. So if you've got this valuable resource like the
pianotech archives, and all these people freely contributing content to it
on an ongoing basis, and it's on your server that you control, why would
you *not* leverage that toward the goals of your larger organization? And
in the PTG's case, some of the goals are to promote RPTs, the piano trade,
etc. Reaching these goals is partly aided by being an information resource
and piano authority on the web.

But it doesn't accrue benefits to your organization unless the expertise
and resources are branded. So the discussion needs to be performed under
the PTG moniker. How do you do this? Well the low-tech way is to modify the
Mailman templates so it appends the little footers to each email with your
branding info, as all Yahoo Groups members are aware: they started as
little two-liner ads at the bottom of each email that filters through their
group servers, and has expanded such that the advertising takes up most of
the screen and you have to look for the message (ok, maybe not that bad,
but you understand).

So if you're not quite deft with the tech expertise, you might say you're
going to "move" your mailing list to another forum where you could put the
PTG banner on the top of each message delivery, and make it so that each
message is accompanied by the appropriate set of links to drive traffic
back to your web site. Web site traffic, in the form of impressions and
clicks, are the lifeblood of any entity wishing to make a mark on the web,
because through them are your goals achieved.

If I am correct, then my.ptg.org may still achieve these goals, because it
puts some social media under the PTG brand, beyond just a normal web site.
I don't like the software, so I have trouble seeing it happening, but I'm
just a computer geek, and besides, nobody saw Apple coming back in the
early 2000's so wild stuff happens in tech. But this also means I don't
assign evil motives to those who think this is a reasonable thing to try to
do for the larger PTG.

Jim
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20130227/1bf04143/attachment.htm>