More Trouble with myLot

There was a time when I spent a considerable amount of time on a site called myLot, a site I have written about here before more than once. What was once a great community with great people and one where the owners and admin had a great sense of admiration and appreciation for the members, has now turned into a bit of a nightmare.

That's thanks to GoAskAlice, the name for the admin that is shared by anyone who takes on the role. The person behind the mask, so to speak, changed a few months ago or even as much as a year ago.

I know who that person is, but as I have mentioned before, I currently choose to not mention the person by name. That being said, if they ever choose to kick me off the site, everything is fair game and I intend to write a major article on HubPages with all the juicy details.

It's not about revenge, mind you. Although admin over there would probably disagree. Admin would probably assume I am trying to wield some sort of power or something.

Not my gig.

It's about what's right, and it's about any site you write for understanding full well the importance of the people who make it go. The content providers. The people that load the pages and let the ads display that keep the lights on—at least over there where ads are important to pay the bills.

I have been on a long hiatus of sorts over there simply because I don't want them to have the revenue that my content and participation provides to them. In my view, they simply don't deserve it. And of course, there are plenty of other places I can write on that do deserve it, and I simply feel my time is better spent delivering content and participation to those sites who foster a good relationship between admin and content provider.

I write on several blogs on Blogspot. I write for HubPages. I write for read.cash of course. And there are other places as well that I write, under my real name, as Porwest, and under a couple of other pseudonyms I use.

In other words, myLot is not the only fish in the sea. There are many others. All of them pay me something. I don't need myLot as much as myLot needs me.

I am not sure if the owners know it. I know that the admin certainly doesn't know it. Either that or he simply doesn't care. Is my hiatus having any impact on myLot's revenues?

I don't know.

I would have to think that it is having at least some impact considering how active I often was on that site. I'd spend hours per day posting, commenting, interacting, going through notifications, and creating long conversational threads in comments.

Each of those activities loads pages over and over again, each time loading more ads, and presumably providing more revenue for the site every time I do it. The lack of my activity, which was considerable can't not be felt in some way or another by the site itself.

And sure, the lack of my activity does impact other members as well who would have otherwise earned pennies from my interaction with them, and I do feel a bit bad about that. But it wasn't my action that lead to my decision to "go on strike." It was theirs. Or, more specifically. It was admin's.

There is a recourse of sorts. One can write to myLot Bugs who is the owner of the site. But who knows if that account is even monitored? I wrote to him, expressing my concerns, and sharing some details of multiple other members who contacted me personally to express their own concerns over admin being a bit overbearing, selective in his approach, targeting people specifically, and threatening to pull the plug on their accounts—not just if they break the rules. Worse, he's looking hard for any infraction he can find to have a reason.

That's bad for business. That's bad for myLot. And as I said before regarding Bugs, I am not sure the owners fully grasp what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe they do but just don't care? I don't know the answer to that.

There was a time when I thought that of any social media site like myLot is, it had a shot to become one of best ones out there, that could attract tens of thousands of more members.

I no longer believe that.

It saddens me just a little bit because at the same time I and my investment group know what the site is worth right now—and we collectively believe that under the right leadership the site could be worth quite a lot more.

We've discussed making an offer for the site for about 150% of current value, but we have other interests and getting into the social media business is not one we really want to pursue at the moment.

None of the other members in my investor group use myLot, but all of us are well aware of the site.

Besides, the businesses we are most familiar with are restaurants and commercial real estate. We'd have to hire someone to deal with programming, algorithms, web development and whatever else—something we simply don't want to invest in right now.

Besides, our time and investment resources are currently invested in an expansion of a BBQ chain we have partial ownership of which is working on opening a third location.

That all said, I think there is one thing that is clear to me. Admin's going to screw up. It's just a matter of time. It's going to happen. So, for any of us other site members who have pulled back on their own activity because of admin's antics, we're just sort of waiting for that to happen and for a new admin to be put in place who is better suited to the job, and who will be more complimentary to the ambitions and purpose of the site, and who will treat the position with more professionalism and respect to the members who make the site go.

I can wait, hanging low in the balance of the time before that happens.

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