So the end has arrived. So long Club Stogie. Welcome Puff.com. No cigar site is perfect. We find them and become addicted to one or another based upon primarily the people that hang out on them not the look and feel or even the intent of the site owners.
Over time, we all learn a little more about the nature of public on line cigar sites if we pay attention. They differ in fundamental ways. From my perspective there are 3 basic types...
1. Sites started and operated by folks in the cigar business. Pretty straightforward. You know that Fuentes, a Magazine etc owns the site and your expectations are set as such.
2. Sites that started out as hobby boards and evolved into a blend of hobby and revenue producing. CS, CL, CR, CP etc fall into this mold. (All the sites bought or attempted to be bought) The desired vibe is the "community" vs the business of the board. The business is in the background seen only by the owner. When you first join one teh "community spirit" disguises the business side. Over time you gain an understanding of the lay of the land. We know the guy that owns it and know that the site is a passion vs a business and appreciate the fact that ads etc help offset the cost of our homes. Interesting that these are the targets for acquisition as they are primed for moving to "the next level". We get rude awakenings when the hobby board owner decides to cash in on "his hobby/our community".
3. Hobby boards. Fall into 2 categories. Ones that started from scratch with no "family" to start them up and migration based boards.. like here. Most of the from scratch ones die off, very few make it. Seems like longer term folks tend to migrate to these types of boards in general as human nature typically gets in the way of brotherhood somewhere along the way on commercially oriented sites. The fist time they put up an ad they become less of a hobby and more of a business to some small degree and begin the evolution or brotherhood to cash cycle.
New hobby boards get started when there is change in existing boards more often than not. Typically in the past, it has been falling outs among st former friends that leads to creating these new boards. This is a new situation ... Kmart comes to the cigar boards kind of thing.
It's another of the many "slippery slopes".. money. One that is hard to gain objective brotherly traction on once a cigar board owner begins to slide.
I'm sure Mr. Caputo will do fine, make lots of money and flip the thing he builds to a "cigar entity" at some point in time. Lot's of new smokers who do searches and they will be right there at the top for them to find "Puffworld". Difference might be that unlike other boards, there might not be longer term knowledgeable folks to provide "ongoing content" that facilitates personal evolution and growth for new members. Could turn into Cigarboardgateway.com where folks quickly move to another board (once they know boards exist at all) that are less commercially tacky.
or.. this is the future and Puff will rule the cigar board universe with "awesome content", "unique visitors", and cool prizes available to everyone who clicks the ads.
We all choose what we like... there are many choices... so it's all good for someone.
01-12-2009, 11:43 AM
Re: It's happening
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