Proposal

[Mark Greenfield]

Below is an e-mail from Lance Merker, the President/CEO of OmniUpdate with a proposal for this site. Given this is a community site, it's only appropriate that the members decide on this proposal. Please provide your feedback by this Friday (May 16).



We at OmniUpdate would like to give a free coffee mug with the University Web Developers emblem to all 700+ subscribers of the ning group. The proposition in simple. We would like to replace the google ads on the right side of the page with the attached banner. The banner (and the free mug offer) would remain for one year. We'll pay all the costs to remove the google ads, and pay for the mugs and shipping to members who request one during the year.

That's it. We won't replace the banner with any advertising nor put our advertising on the mugs!

Members of the group get a symbol of their association with the social network -- hopefully building some camaraderie and group spirit -- and we get brand recognition from the sponsorship.

Regards,

Lance

Lance Merker
President/CEO
OmniUpdate, Inc.

[Susan]

I'd be agreeable; however others bring up some good points:
-What will our addresses be used for and for how long?
-Do we pay shipping?
-I think it being up there for an entire year exclusively might be a bit much.

[Mike]

Not a coffee drinker and got plenty of free mugs anyway, but really don't care either way.
Who has final approval?

[Barb Byers]

I'll miss all those Google ads...sigh...but I guess it would be nice to get a new coffee mug instead...

[Bill]

I'd like to know what my address would be used for in their marketing. 7000 coffee mugs is pennies for what they could sell out addresses for. At least with the Google ads, they can not sell important information.

[Susan]

Good point. We should find out about this before we agree.

[Bill]

Well, if this goes through, i say we get the list as well and start selling it. =)

[German Vargas]

Sounds good to me, I've actually checked out their product (as a student) and I like it, might find it useful someday soon. Besides, looking at the Google ads that are listed on the sidebar as a type this, the are kinda cheesy (Ning is actually on there, coincidentally).

[Melissa Fassel Dunn]

Fine with me as long as my info isn't being sold-- at least the ads will be consistent! I like free stuff. And coffee.

[Jeremy Britten]

Yeah, I think this would be pretty fair trade off. I love free coffee mugs, especially ones that call me a "website hero"!

[Chris Heiland]

Seems fair. What happens after a year?

[Steve Wilson]

Sounds good to me.

[Derek Tonn]

This proposal has my full-support, provided that [uwebd] require that the OmniUpdate banner ad is an optimized .png (attached) as opposed to the current unoptimized 22 KB .gif. Save all of us the 8+ KB of caching and a tiny bit of time every time we visit the site, LOL. :-P

Seriously though, I am fine with this proposal from Lance. OmniUpdate is a class-act, and I see this as one of those win-win types of relationships. They get greater exposure for their products and services, [uwebd] gets a more "relevant" ad in place of the current Google ads. Great all-around.

To be honest though, I had no idea this site has any ads associated with it until reading this thread. A combination of Firefox, AdBlock and RIP (Remove It Permanently) sees to that. Stinks for online advertisers, but those extensions and Firefox have been a God-send to making some web sites bearable/tolerable to visit by filtering out all of the junk that comes along with them.