Well, there I was, checking out site rankings at Alexa.com for my hobby sites and all of a sudden - I find my name being mentioned favorably here at good old TanToday.com.
Amazing... Wonders may never cease...
First - Congrats to all: To Alan for getting something out of his work.... (well, we can hope). To Bruce for seeing his brainchild grow up and come of age, and to
Looking Fit, especially Jenny and Co., for "getting it".
Back in 1996/1997 or so it was my great joy to to envision the use of the web as a business growth empowering discussion forum for tanning industry members. I thought it could be a year round trade show sort of thing. By this I don't mean the commercial part of trade shows, but the meeting of minds part. The best things to come from trade shows were never the formal meetings, but all the informal discussions that took place between peers - both after hours and in the halls between sessions. So I kicked off the online thing for salon owners and industry members by building what I called a "TOWN" at the interesection of Tanning and Technology.
SunTanning.com was a wild ride! In the beginning, salon owners and industry members truly helped each other in an unprecedented way. Soon we had 2000 people a day meeting online and it really took off.
Bruce took it to a whole new level - at TanToday.com. It was WAYYY OVERBOARD at times - stirring the pot with unfounded controversy just to keep his site in the spotlight - and he will be the first to admit it. But he also did some AMAZING things with his unprecedented ability to turn a phrase, herd cats, and constellate the community around a no holds barred type of truth in media thing. It was powerful.
TanTalk was out there too. Chunn's site was always so much more "corporate". Guess what - a company with multiple programmers and IT guys could build a prettier site... And there is always a place for "pretty". Bet it's a cash cow today!
So... Lest Alan Forget, he is "standing on the shoulders of giants". He is currently presiding by a gossamer thread over something that was conceived and built before he came along. That something is a COMMUNITY. Alan did not create the communities, but he did manage to organize the factions after the inevitable civil war. And that is a special skill as well.
So, I recommend credit be given where due. First there was none. Then there was one - or two or three. Every industry has its founders, it's special people, and it's BIG THREE. So did the online tanning community.
Jenny B and Virgo also have a rightful place in any discussion of the industry.
But current owners should BEWARE.... The online community thing is not a brand, and nobody owns it.
Bruce was not claiming any special place in history of tanning because of a domain name. It went far deeper than that.
Community is a special thing. If this group decided to all move to another domain tomorrow, then it could.
The old "ViRGO GOLDEN RULE" won't govern here...
From the old days.... When bashing erupted.... somebody always came up with the line,
"Can't we all just get along?"
You know - that's not such a bad idea : )