How a computer programmer followed his dream and started a highly successful message board community. An interview with visionary Vanchau Nguyen, Founder and Chief Technology officer of ezboard.com.

Your background includes having built and operated BBS and online communities for over ten years. While you launched ezboard in November of 1998, when did you first have the concept of this type of business? 
Bulletin board systems (BBS) started around the early 1980's. Back then, computer equipment was quite expensive, and running a BBS required a LOT of work. There were many BBSs that had to become mini-businesses in order to stay afloat. Typically, their membership would pay a monthly access fee that would provide services like email, chat, message boards, file download areas, and most importantly a way to communicate with other people with similar interests.

So even though the concept has been around, it hasn't been till recently that it has become cost-effective, mainly due to the explosion in popularity of the Internet and the ever-decreasing costs of computer hardware.

In 1997, I had started another company and needed a strong community component to really make it work. I thought for sure someone had already created a great web based bulletin board system, but in fact, no one had. Pieces of the concept existed, such as chat and message boards, but no one had really gotten it right. I immediately saw a huge opportunity and launched the service in November, 1998 on a laptop and modem line.

Why did you choose to offer free message boards?

This is a great question. A lot of people do not understand the difference between a message board and an online community. I see the message board as a crucial piece, but not the only piece, of an online community. Message boards are one tool or communication medium - email, calendar, and chat are examples of other tools.

I decided to start with message boards because, in my experience, the message board was truly the core of the community. A message board (also called a forum, discussion room, or bulletin board) allows people to make and read posts. The great thing about a post is that it stays around for a while. Other people can read the post long after it was originally created. This allows community members to communicate with each other with out having to be there at the same time. Chat and instant messaging require everyone to be there at the same time, so it's much more difficult building a community with those tools.

Our service is free to users (meaning, supported by advertising) because we wanted to make the barriers to creating online communities as low as possible. Communities are as unique as the people creating them. There is no telling which ones will flourish and which ones will not. People are already investing their time and creativity; asking them to pay directly for the service just didn't make sense.

That being said, we have found that a number of our communities cannot, or prefer not to, have advertising as a part of their sites. We will honor those preferences by introducing a low cost subscription option - providing our service, ad free - beginning in July.

The word "community" is woven throughout the fabric of your site. If your vision is to help people connect and interact over the Internet in a true sense of community, what is your definition of community?

Perhaps the best way for me to explain what community means to me is to explain our slogan, "helping people connect." On the surface, it's pretty straightforward -- we allow people to meet and interact. However, the real meaning behind the slogan is that we're not just connecting people, we're helping people CONNECT. "Connect" here meaning on a more meaningful or emotional level. We're trying to provide a medium by which people can express and be themselves, thereby allowing more substantial relationships to develop.

Our ultimate vision at ezboard is to support people creating their own little "worlds", inviting others to participate in them, and even getting compensated for the value they add.

How does ezboard plan to generate revenue?

We believe in a fair, value-based compensation model. In English, that means we'll receive value when we provide value. Our goal is to empower our community administrators and allow them not only to participate in revenue opportunities, but often times, be the driving force in making it work. Whether it's targeted advertising, opt-in email programs, e-commerce opportunities, subscription programs, or other vehicles, we want our administrators and end users to be highly motivated partners in monetizing their communities and ezboard.

Two programs we are launching very soon are great examples of where we are headed. Both programs offer valuable new services to our users. Both make those services available through community administrators, and both share revenue generated with the communities themselves. One program shares monthly revenue based on advertising -- both we and the administrator get a piece of the advertising revenue generated. The other program pays a bounty for service enrollment, which we split with the administrator.

What are ezboard's unique selling points?

Two things make ezboard stand apart from the rest.

The first would have to be our product. Our online community offering is the best in its class. We have a superior product because, from the beginning, we have engaged our users as an integral part of the development process. In the early days, when the company was just me, I would literally have two windows up. One window would be a programming screen where I would write code, the other screen was typically a chat or ICQ session with several users. At this point in time, users could actually be on the system while I was working on it. They would report bugs or feature requests and I would do them "on the fly". Obviously, our development process has become more sophisticated since, but the commitment to user collaboration has remained. Our users not only help us to find bugs and problems, they help us to define its direction.

This has led us to a product that is extremely configurable, adaptable, and scalable.

The second point, which I have already touched upon, is our relationship with our administrators and users. A lot of people talk about the 3 C's of a successful Internet company - content, commerce and community. We believe there are actually four, the last being collaboration. We believe our success will come from our ability to leverage the energy, creativity and passion of our customers. In fact, we don't think of our administrators and users as customers, but as an extension of our company.

Assuming that ezboard's business model is based upon an advertising revenue stream, do you plan to share this with your message board community?

Absolutely, not only with advertising streams, but other revenue streams as well, such as opt-in email, subscription, sponsorship and commerce opportunities. Revenue sharing and fair, value-based compensation go hand in hand.

Your Terms of Use are quite specific. How do you monitor board posts to ensure your TOS are met? And how do you remove anything that is prohibited by the Terms of Use?

We do not actively go out and look for content that violates our TOS. We take a more passive stance, but if we are notified of violations, we then go and take a look. Usually, we'll send a warning to the administrator. Now and then we have to remove a post, ban a user, or on very rare occasions (in fact, I believe only once so far), shut down the community.

Many community services such as yours actually own the copyright to all material contained on the site (the message boards, in this case). Is this true of ezboard?

Yes it is. We see the "ownership" issue as important to our ability to monitor our Terms of Use. However, unlike other community services, we have no intention of using the content of the message boards for our own business purposes - like syndicating content, for example. So long as our communities and users act within our Terms of Use, we view the material as fundamentally theirs to use as they see fit.

If this is true, will people hesitate to sign up, feeling their personal comments might be given to the world at large?

We have a solid reputation for supporting our communities and administrators, and not using their content for our own purposes. So long as we continue that behavior, I don't think we'll have a problem. Our growth has certainly been very strong to date.

In a very short time, ezboard topped 1 million users and 100 million page views. You have International versions of ezboard available i.e. Spanish, German, Japanese, features to protect forums from spamming, voice message functioning, and much more. Where do you expect ezboard to be by January, 2001? January 2002?

By January 2001, we will be the clear leader in our space, not only in terms of market share, but also in perception. We will be a model for collaborative community development that other companies emulate.

By January 2002, we will have evolved into a much bigger company and will be providing a plethora of services that provide the substance to support the philosophy and vision that got us there.

To reach Vanchau Nguyen, write to mailto:vanchau@ezboard.com
and to access the site, go to http://www.ezboard.com/.