Terry's MBA 734 Blog

Summary:
At the time of this case (Early 2005) EZBoard is the leading hosted message/discussion board site in the United States. They had little competition among other hosted boards, such as ProBoards and Yahoo! Groups, but script products vBulletin and phpBB allowed bulletin board software to managed by customers on their site. This allowed for newer technology, updates, and a greater degree of customization for message board administrators who were willing and able to take the time out for configuration and management. EZBoard’s newly hired CEO Robert Labatt was tasked with bringing the company to a new level of profitability where margins were already thin. Labatt took actions to cut cost through personnel and contract changes and then he was able to generate additional advertising revenue. The next step for Labatt was to manage the transition of the new version of the EZBoard hosted board software and to figure out the right revenue model going forward.

Analysis and Recommendations:
- EZBoard’s competitive advantage over scripted bulletin board software companies is that they 1) offer convenience of a hosted board, 2) have an installed user base that can access boards across the EZBoard platform. A recent survey showed that 60% of users visted more than one board per week.
- The EZBoard revenue comes from board administrators and from a percentage of users who decide to sign up for an enhanced account or donate to their discussion board’s community chest.
- The current setup allows for registered and unregistered users to post messages

Changes to User Management
To increase advertising revenues and increase the strength of EZBoard’s second competitive advantage, I suggest that the site require all users who post messages to register with the service and provide basic information. This would give advertisers more useful information on who is looking at their ads and how they can target ads to the audience on the board. The paid user accounts should have some additional benefits and incentives such as allowing them to view and vote on board posts prior to non-paying registered users. Additional profile and customization options should be added to paying users first and then in lesser measures to non-paying users. User survey results showed a high correlation between quality of posts and enjoyment/participation. I think adding a way for users to track/highlight their favorite posters or never see posts from posters who they do not enjoy would allow for customized experience for each user.

Board Subscription
For the convenience of a hosted solution the customer should expect to pay a fee. As the hosting provider should be giving more assurance of service uptime outside of stated upgrade/maintenance timeframes. This will give the customer an more security in that they have a worry free solution and that all the site management is handled by EZBoard. Any pricing changes should communicated to users upfront and be made 3 months after the new version is implemented. This would allow customers and their users to get used to the software prior to seeing financial changes and reduces the chances they will switch to a differing service.