Farewell Graham Langdon
Yesterday, Graham Langdon, former owner of Entrecard, announced that Entrecard is now under the ownership of Ziprunner Inc. Unfortunately, I was unable to find their website or any information about them. Goodbye to Graham, and hello to Ziprunner. Graham came up with an innovative idea that changed the blogosphere, but the change had to come. A one man show was just too much to run such a big and popular site. It is now in the hands of a company, who can hopefully bring about some much needed and asked for changes.
Ziprunner acquires Entrecard and a whole mess attached to it: discontent and angry members who have been urging for changes to be made. The new ownership will most likely bring back old members who left because of the previous poor management. Hopefully, we will be able to actually communicate with the staff and get some of our issues with Entrecard solved.
Though Graham will be around as an advisor, it is up to the new Ziprunner management to earn the respect and hearts of the Entrecard members. In order to do this they must:
- Establish themselves, and fast. Right now, no one knows anything about this company or the people behind it. With Graham, it was just one guy who we could easily familiarize with. This made it feel like a community. With a company, it feels more business-like and distant and that’s not a good thing because Entrecard is based around a tight community. They should make a statement and give us some names.
- State their intentions. What plans do they have for Entrecard?
- Set up and handle customer support. Let’s face it- no issues were dealt with under Graham. If you had an issue or a complaint, you could fill out a ticket, yes, but it would never be answered. Let’s hope Ziprunner will be able to deal with complaints and suggestions better.
- Make some changes. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed. Being under a company, there is more manpower that can create changes to improve Entrecard.
I am optimistic about Entrecard under Ziprunner Inc. I believe that they will be able to bring about some good changes and fix the slumping reputation Entrecard has. It’s a big task but it can be done. This is my farewell to Graham Langdon. I appreciate your hard work and dedication to this project. It was a wise decision to sell and put Entrecard in better hands to allow it to expand. Thanks again.
Posted in News
I’m optimistic about the change, but I am a little concerned that I can’t find any info about ZipRunner. Hopefully we’ll hear from them over the next few days, even a brief statement of what they plan to do will alleviate a lot of the rumors that are already starting to fly on some of the blogs.
Statement from Ziprunner is already in the EntreCard Blog. Sounds nice but nothing written anymore about Cashout-program like i’ve written in Cornymans Moneypage.
First change… no more cashout for new members or members who didn’t sign up for the CashOut-Program?
It definitely was time for Graham to leave entrecard. He was making very poor business decisions that drove away a lot of good bloggers. There has been some speculation that some of these blogger might return now that Graham no longer owns entrecard however with his announcement that he is staying on as advisor (possibly untrue) I doubt many will return. It will be his continued association with EC that will hurt the new ownership. ZipRunner would be well advised to cut all ties with Graham. At any rate they have an awful lot of damage control and damage repair to do. Any signs of being wishy washy, showing lack of respect for their members, making rule changes without notice, excessive censorship or any of the other nonsense that has been going on in the past will show them to be no better than Graham so EC will continue its rapid downward spiral. Don’t forget under Graham’s management EC has lost 1/3 of its traffic over the last 3 months. Now ZipRunner will have to earn that traffic back. Time will tell at how successful they are at that. I wish them the best and hope that they can turn EC into what it was meant to be.