Familiar sound to it...

Bianca's Closing

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Answers

Some salient bits--and please notice how warm and friendly bianca is compared to, well, you-know-who:

5 April. . . $36 [per year] is just too much, they can't afford it. So, we have decided to lower the price of a new membership to $29.95. For the people who have purchased new memberships for $36, we don't want to penalize you, so we have added 3 months to your memberships.

9 April. . . Our main cost right now is bandwidth. We're currently spending around $9000/month just to pay for chatty bianca's phone bill. Much of that bandwidth is being used by a small number of very high traffic member forums. . . we need the people who visit the forums to contribute to the well being of the community.

. . . We're thinking of limiting the use of high-traffic forums by non-members. This would likely take the form of a bandwidth cap where non-members visiting high-traffic forums will be blocked from time to time to keep the forum within its bandwidth limits. This will help keep our bandwidth costs down to something we can afford, and it will encourage people who are enjoying bianca's to help pay for site's upkeep. Members, of course, will be able to visit any forum they want without worrying about the caps.

27 April. . . bianca's shutting the shack on May 11th--Yes folks, it's true. After more than seven years of rocking the internet with the world's largest house party, bianca's is shutting down. With internet advertising in the hole we can no longer afford to pay for our own bandwidth. Even if bandwidth costs magically went to zero, we're not bringing in enough cash to pay any reasonable salaries. Heck, most of us haven't been paid in the last month or two. . .

30 April 2001. . . Trying to Work Things Out. . . We're working with the folks at Nerve to find bianca a new home. There's a decent chance that we'll be able to work SOMETHING out before the site goes dark on May 11th. Keep looking here for more news, but as usual, it's always a good idea to back up your content.

Even warm and friendly bianca couldn't persuade enough of her members to pay annual dues. What hope does ezboard have? I guess we'll find out.

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001