I am sick and tired of people relaunching my websites.

See:

http://nicetags.com

http://deepleap.org

What's next? Uber? Teeth? Flabjab?!?!

imitation... flattery?

It would be more flattering if I wasn't carrying around resentment from how those sites ended.

But I will.

Can't you get them for something like IP infringement, depending on how nicetags works out?

Call marc and get a cease and desist letter

corpse-fuckers!

Apparently I included the thumbs up favicon in the open source package. Sigh.

We all know who the real Slim Shady is.

Ben, do you know who's behind nicetags? I'm fairly sure it's someone from original CM, but I didn't make a note of who...

seems kind of disrespectful of him :'p

His name is Francesco.

Apparently it's "the new CONS**ATI*G". Totally different.

@catlady That would be a trademark, and C|NUTS owns the rights to it now, unless there was some clause in the contract when Ben sold it.

@catlady Yes, CNET / CBS owns Consumating and everything that went with it.

I said "failure" because I lost control of the site and it ended up getting shut down. The same thing happened to Deepleap. Had I had my way, both sites would still be running quietly on a server somewhere, making like $50/month on Google ads.

I am less and less "the man" every day that goes by. Trust me, almost nobody cares that I am the internet rockstar when it comes to actually paying for my services.

@the way i get by There isn't enough traffic for Google ads to make sense. People have to click them to make any money, and there are fewer than 500 people visiting the site each day who might click them - that is, people who are not members of the site and came by clicking a link from Google.

If I *NEEDED* to make money, I might consider charging a "PRO" fee like Flickr.

OK DONE.

SRSLY! I make about $150/month on adsense. There are things you can do to optimize it.

hey what IS that nice tags thing? scurvy showed it to me yesterday and i passed it to adam. weirdest thing ever

Nice Tags isn't going to end up anything if people don't join/sign up. Internet Evil Eye and so on...

I don't care if people use it or not, I care that he wants to RECREATE MY OLD SITE, pixel for pixel.

Or WILL HE? God knows I have a few backups in my closet. You know, in case anything happens to the original.

would bizzaro __pharaoh be like really nice to everyone? hahaha

bizzaroskanko wouldnt have a beard. THAT IS UNBEARABLE.

@benbrown: Do you think you could start a successful business that promises to "seed" a new community site with, say, 1000 unique, intersting, hip people for 90 days? (These 1000 people will actually be 25 writers playing multiple roles...)

would bizzaro Kirsty! be Kristen?

ok, sorry to be thick, but then aren't these guys infringing on CNET / CBS' rights? or are they working for them?

Re: Bizzaros.

I hate them all except turtleface.

I, for one, welcome our new Italian overlords.

a) we've all had closure and moved on.
b) it wouldn't have the same soul as the original
c) any number of original participants in Consumating could have done what you are doing but chose not to. think about that a minute.
d) your intentions may be pure, but I don't see "Internet Rockstar" in your wikipedia entry and seriously doubt you have Ben's golden touch for creating community oriented sites
e) thank you for at least approaching us for comments.

in my haste I forgot the @francesco part of that last post

@slowpoke:
I am not trying to get polemic but please see my comments below:

a) we've all had closure and moved on.
There may be people who want to experience what you experienced already! This is the main reason why I started hacking the code in order to make it work.

b) it wouldn't have the same soul as the original
This is true and obvious, but I would like to get close to that in order to fulfill my desire of experiencing it. When you listen to punk music nowadays it isn't like living it on its period but you can still get emotive about it.

c) any number of original participants in Consumating could have done what you are doing but chose not to. think about that a minute.
I thought about this lots of times, but to me the question remain. What's the added value of burying something really nice and declare it dead forever, instead of putting it back to life?

d) your intentions may be pure, but I don't see "Internet Rockstar" in your wikipedia entry and seriously doubt you have Ben's golden touch for creating community oriented sites
I may have arrangements with Ben discussed on a separate thread :) Also, I never said that I could make it better than Ben. This is why my intention was to make it as close as the original. The only thing that I said is that I could be better on trying to monetize it and make the community be auto sufficient in terms of maintenance costs, so that it would not die again.

e) thank you for at least approaching us for comments.
As I said, your opinion is important to me! I thought I was doing something that would have been appreciated by old Consumate users, but for what I have seen and read it is the exact contrary... So then I may decide to keep the code private and play with it with close friends and my girlfriend instead of releasing it publicly :)

Thank you for your comments and apologies if my English isn't so good

@Osteocephalic

First of all, there is no reason to be mean. So please calm down. I already have lots of wishes for any disease present nowadays, and I am curious about the fact that no one has wished me swine flu yet.

Again it is easy to understand, but probably I was not too clear:

I am reconstructing it pixel by pixel, but I am not pretending that the code or ideas are mine. This to me means just setting the code back to how it was, and not steal someone else ideas. It will be visible to everybody that not the code or pixels are mine, and belong to Ben Brown and to the community that made it nice.

Secondly, there are many ways of monetizing a website without the use of Adsense. I am not saying that Ben didn't think about ways of making the community live by itself, but I may know other ways to do it, without being invasive within the community itself. My goal is to make it auto sufficient, as said before, in terms of maintenance, and not to make lots of bucks with it, I am not trying to achieve the success that Facebook has, and I don't think it would be possible.

Also, what is terribly wrong to me, is that you, and in this you are arrogant, forgive me if I say this, think that the old community was made by nice people, and that outside that group of elected, there isn't anyone with the same mood and nice attitude anymore. Why? Why do you want to keep just for yourself, without giving the possibility to other people, or younger people, to enjoy being part of a community that is radically different from Facebook or Badoo? After all, the code was released open source for this reason, to give the possibility to somebody else to take care of it and to construct communities that run on the same core as Consumating. Again, I thought that old Consumating users would have liked this. I have seen many derisory comments about what CN has made with the community and how it transformed it. So you are OK about the fact that CN killed it, but you are not OK about somebody else make it revive? Does this make sense? Unfortunately, I was not on Consumating, and so what?

The fact that the code belongs to Ben Brown will be clearly stated everywhere in the site as I said, but think about this, why do people do remake of movies? Star wars? Great success. Now tell me, the great success has come from people remaking it, or just because the original ideas where so good?

How about this then: wouldn't it be possible that your son, nephew or whoever younger then you, would like to have an account on a community made like Consumating? Is it so bad to give them, or to me, that I was not on Consumating, such a possibility?

First of all, I am reconstructing it pixel by pixel because as I told, I don't actually know how it was. This may just be temporary, and those people who will become users, even if you will write bad things against it, can drive me towards a redesign of graphics and/or functionality.

Have a nice day.

@Francesco: you keep making the comment about profit, or making money from the site. If you look back, the site thrived until it became part of that profit-driven culture of CNET/CBS. Honestly it sounds like you're just trying to make a fast buck off of this.

I once saw people selling poorly-produced pictures of Elvis outside of Graceland. You remind me of them.

@Osteocephalic: AMEN!!!

I want doorprizes if I join.

Hey Osteocephalic,
we are talking about March 2008, not some remote and very old community lost in the Pleistocene age.

How does it come that Facebook is using thumbs-up even if we live in the "future"? How does it come that Badoo is using popularity even if we are in 2009? But that's OK for you, the fact that big companies are dissecting good ideas from Consumating and speculate big money from it does not make you upset. I bet you didn't think about it, just because you are too advanced to see those small thingies.

Consumating was a social network, social networks are a couple of years old, and the fact that MySpace, Badoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other are still working, this means to me that the social network age is still the present, and we haven't gone that far yet.

Then if you want your son to go ahead and meet her princess all ass and tits with no brain at all on some cheap networking sites, go ahead. I am not here to convince you or your son to sign up on the community I am restoring.

Than it seems a public fact to me that Consumating died because it was sold to a big company and didn't go well. It didn't die, for my knowledge, because Ben Brown decided that it was too old, or that it had made its days. It was sold for money. I am not here to judge this, but I bet that if it generated just a bit of money to be auto sufficient it would have been still alive, and I would have no reason to restore it. I would just have an account on Ben's community and be happy to live with just that.

Plus, there is no reason to make reference to geographic origins, after all we are in the future, and I don't think this is the best period in America to do derisory discussions about ethnic differences. And this is very offensive, if you really want to know it.

Plus if "let it burn in the fire of cancerAIDS" isn't a reference to a physical disease, then you are all right, nobody whished me any disease. It was ironic, but strangers, as you said, may have a different sense of humor.

Plus, I am getting boring, but I want to repeat it once again, the main purpose of restoring it is to experience it, believe it or not, because I think that the ideas behind Consumating are still contemporary and that I will enjoy having an account on it.

After saying this, I am here to discuss, but don't expect that I won't debate against something you or other people say, if I don't agree.

@Francesco: Your facts are wrong. Facebook didn't get thumbs up and down from Consumating. They got it from film critic Roger Ebert, who in turn got it from the EMPERORS OF ROME. A swing and a miss.

Popularity contests originated with Consumating? Oh, yeah, try again. Popularity contests have been running for centuries. What do you call elections?

Damn, dude, every post makes you sound like a bitch. Your attempt to come on here and defend the complete rip-off of the site built by someone who has forgotten more about building social networks than you will ever learn is ridiculous.

Nobody said "I hope Francesco gets cancer of the anus", they said they hope the site dies. I hope the site dies. If you're too stupid to figure out why we're not enthusiastic about you doing your idiotic project, you're probably too dumb to be using my internet.

If members of my family wanted a quality social networking experience, they could find far far better choices than any of them you're capable of building. Do you have original ideas you intend to launch, or are you going to vomit an old site back onto the internet and then whine about it when the founder of the site calls you out on it?

How do you say "honor" in Italian? Did they make you learn that word?

it's as if he is begging for trolls....

i think it's the building annoyance, i don't say outright hostility. ..

ok.... maybe Osteocephalic is hostile.....

i retract my statment.

see? it agitates ... it cant be helped.

You know, this is gonna sound funny coming from me, but I think the level of anger in here right now is really unnecessary.

He's already said multiple times that he's not taking credit for the site, he's just building a clone. Why are we okay with NTSH doing it, but not this dude? Because NTSH has a different design? Because one of us made it? Probably for both of those reasons.

I was angry when I saw nice tags or whatever too. I even sent an angry tweet to this dude, cos I'm a little jerk, but obviously he doesn't care what our feelings are about taking a dead site and bringing it back exactly as it was. I think its a misguided idea, but I think he's probably gonna do it anyway whether Osteo calls him a bitch or not. It's open source for this specific purpose, guys. Get over it.

Besides, what level of success is this guy really gonna have? Consu was a success because we all decided we didn't want to hang out on Myspace anymore, and lets be honest, it was powered by our own ridiculousness and nerdulence and in-jokes. A clone wouldn't survive without this specific community, so let this dude do what he wants and when it fails, we'll be on gti to post our "I told you so"s.

ok, i was NOT going to comment here at all, as i agree with bizzy. so maybe all i would have said was that i agree with bizzy. time to move on. everyone else here has their points, too, some bad some good (including francesco, sorry to say), but i did NOT want to get involved.

unforutnately, the very last comment won't let me be until i comment on it.

naturelle, you said 'A clone wouldn't survive without this specific community' and, frankly, given all the accusations back and forth about arrogance here, that is the most arrogant one of them all.

yes, this guy said he wanted old consumators to sign up for his site but now that it's plain we won't he wants to give his new consumating site to another community of people who want it. so if there are people who want it, let them have it. the software is the clone, not the people.

my main point being: who are WE to say that our community was the 'best.' of course *we* think so, but that is opinion. no, of course it can't be replicated (though that is what we're doing here on gti in many ways, no?), but the world is full of people and communities and online communities and the potential for many, many more online communities. we chose consu and liked it best and the people who chose it helped form its soul and culture.

now if there is a new one--and it doesn't matter if it's consu or any other social networking site--the people who come there will create the soul and culture of it. it might not be a soul or culture *we* will vibe with, but there *will* be one.

it's just *opinion* which site is cooler than the others. we find our own communities and we like what we like and who we like and others do the same. on and offline. that's how it works.

to say a new online community can't survive without US isn't only ridiculously arrogant, it us just plain WRONG. if it's good in the objective ways it can be good (user friendly, etc) and a group of people grow to like it and vibe with each other, there is no reason it won't survive just as well as any other online community.

yes, consu was special because of US, but it was also special TO us. not everyone else.

to each their own, people.

i think it's pretty lame to call me arrogant when I was just trying to diffuse an argument that was going in circles, but hey whatever homegurl.

I'm just hear to sing "GTI, FUCK YEAH" to the tune of "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!"

I'm also here to right incorrectly.

HAH. I know I'd rather click on adwords than half naked AA models. PERSONAL PREFERENCE AND ALL.