Facebook for Volkswagens?

Another new year is with us, and it's once again time to make resolutions and see if we can stick with them. This March will see the second birthday for Vdubber, and it's good to see that we are still here. We are still chipping away at increasing our member base and site activity, but as usual with any new venture, these things take time to gain momentum.

A recent conversation with a new site user alerted me to the fact that the perception of the site was that of just another Volkswagen forum, which surprised me a little, as I had always considered that the site was geared more towards everything other than being a forum. Much though i would like to discount his observation. It's probably a valid one.

Promoting a site like this is difficult. There is no other site that provides the same feature-set as Vdubber. Which is largely aimed at being a social network, rather than being simply another forum. There is really no point in trying to compete with the established giants like VZI, TheSamba, Aussieveedubbers etc. These are long established forums, and there would be little success in trying to persuade anyone that Vdubber's forum offers anything better then they already get at their favourite site.

This is why the idea behind Vdubber was to provide the social networking features that the established forums did not. Things like Blogs, Photo and Video hosting, Groups and other social networking tools. We saw that there was a niche to make a site to provide these things. But whilst the niche is there, it is not really clearly defined.

So far Vdubber has been promoted as a 'community' site, an 'aircooled social network'. But both of these descriptions are too subtle. Neither really explain what Vdubber 'is', or what Vdubber is about. What we would really like to say is that Vdubber is 'Facebook for Volkswagens', but until now I have not wanted to make such blatant a statement.

It was the conversation with the new user that alerted me to this. He literally said that Vdubber really was 'Facebook for Volkswagens', and he was sure that if the site was promoted as such, it would be a lot more successful. I must admit, i agree.

The only trouble for me is that i much prefer subtlety, to blatantness. Marketing anything as 'Facebook this-or-that' is not really my style. But, in reality, that is what we are trying to be. I guess to take advantage of that association, then blatant is what we need to be.

So. The new year has brought me some resolve to better promote the site. And perhaps try to be a little less subtle.

Happy 2011.