boards.ie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
boards.ie
File:Vbulletin3 logo white 2.gif

Now Ye're Talking
URL http://www.boards.ie
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Classified discussion boards
Registration optional; required to post
Available language(s) English, Irish; some subforums for other languages
Owner Tom Murphy, John Breslin, Dan King, Jerry Connolly, Gerry Shanahan
Created by John Breslin
Launched 1998 (rebranded 2000)

boards.ie is an Internet forum based in Ireland. It is considered one of the largest indigenous Irish websites online. [1] As of April 2009 the site has over 1,000,000 visitors a month, 220,000 registered accounts, almost 1,000,000 threads and more than 12.5 million posts. A wide variety of topics are discussed, mostly from (but not limited to) an Irish perspective.

Contents

[edit] History

In 1998, Dr. John "Cloud" Breslin created a single forum under the name Cloud Boards to enable discussion amongst Irish users of the id Software game Quake[2], while employed as a researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway. This forum was a response/expansion to the IGN quake.ie forum, and utilized "Matt's WWWBoard" software. The site gained in popularity until the size of its threads exceeded the capacity of the software. Breslin came into contact with Tom Murphy, who had been administrating a Quake-related forum called Quakapalooza, utilizing Murphy's ASP software. Cloud Boards then began using Ultimate Bulletin Board Software. [3] Breslin proposed a more general (not just Quake-related) forum, dedicated to general Irish issues, in 1999, and considered the name boards.ie to be a more useful and desired domain.

In 2000, Cloud Boards was then rebranded for a more general audience. Limitations in what organizations could register prevented private individuals from registering vanity or custom domains. Breslin had previously been unsuccessful in registering the domain cloud.ie with the Irish domain registry. Murphy entered a bet with Breslin that he could successfully register a domain for a rebranded web forum. Murphy renamed his company Spin Solutions to Boards for a day, registered the paperwork with the Irish domain registrar for Boards.ie, and was granted the domain. [4]

In 2003, boards.ie achieved one million posts to its forums. [5]

And, in 2008, the popular After Hours forum achieved its millionth post.

In 2007, the boards.ie Ltd. company acquired the rights to boards.us and other domains from Breslin. [6]

In 2008, boards.ie hired its first full-time developer. [7] For the 10th year anniversary of boards.ie the complete data set of its discussions with semantic markup (see SIOC) was published and a competition looking for interesting creations based on this data was launched.[8]. Later that year in August, boards.ie saw its first shareholding investment from Daft.ie[9]

In 2009, boards.ie expanded further, with the hiring of two new "Community Managers", charged with being a public face for boards.ie and an interaction point for commercial and political entities. An additional Systems Administrator role has also been filled, in recognition of the increased need for a reliable hardware infrastructure.

[edit] Structure

The site is owned by five individuals, known as the administrators, or "admins", who delegate administrative and editorial control over the site to hundreds of unpaid moderators. Daft.ie owns a minority stake in the forum[10]. Each admin has a one-fifth stake in the rest of the boards.ie parent company, Boards, Ltd. [11] Currently Tom Murphy is operating as acting Managing Director after the departure of the previous director, Gerry Shanahan, in February 2009. [12] There are over 1,000 forums, public and private.

A new forum can be proposed by anyone, but requires a certain amount of support from other members. Most users do not pay any usage fees, although subscription is offered with benefits such as free webspace.

[edit] Expansion

The boards.ie site took its successful formula for web forums and created a number of sites aimed around other countries, including boards.us (United States), boards.jp (Japan), boards.com.cn (China), and boards.co.nz (New Zealand). Sites associated with classified advertising (adverts.ie) and social networking (social.ie) have been started as well.

[edit] Awards

For his contribution to Irish society, Tom Murphy was awarded a Net Visionary Award by the Irish Internet Association in 2004 in the "Social Contribution" category. [13]

Dr. Breslin was awarded Net Visionary Awards by the Irish Internet Association in 2005 [14] and 2006[15]. Boards.ie won two awards in the Irish web awards 2008.

boards.ie was awarded a Zeddy [16] in 2001. (The Zeddy Awards have since been discontinued.)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gordon, Smith (2007-02-08). "Boards.ie acquires Boards Group in expansion play". Siliconrepublic.com. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7767. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  2. ^ Boran, Marie (2008-02-14). "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". Irish Independent. http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/images/3/3e/20080214b.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  3. ^ Mulley, Damien (2005-12-05). "A new Net visioned He - Interview with John Breslin". Mulley.Net. http://www.mulley.net/2005/12/05/a-new-net-visioned-he-interview-with-john-breslin/. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  4. ^ Stewart, David (2005-02-11). "The Friday Interview: Tom Murphy, Boards.ie". Siliconrepublic.com. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4427. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  5. ^ Lillington, Karlin (2003). "Boards.ie knows how to get people talking". ireland.com. http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/images/9/93/20030829a.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  6. ^ Gordon, Smith (2007-02-08). "Boards.ie acquires Boards Group in expansion play". Siliconrepublic.com. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single7767. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  7. ^ Boran, Marie (2008-02-14). "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". Irish Independent. http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/images/3/3e/20080214b.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  8. ^ Boran, Marie (2008-07-29). "Making use of a decade of online Irish banter". Siliconrepublic.com. http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11118/digital-life/using-a-decade-of-online-irish-banter. Retrieved on 2008-07-30. 
  9. ^ Daft Media invests in boards.ie
  10. ^ Daft Media buys Boards.ie stake
  11. ^ Boran, Marie (2002-02-18). "John Breslin". Siliconrepublic.com. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single10273. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  12. ^ Lillington, Karlin (2003). "Boards.ie knows how to get people talking". ireland.com. http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/images/9/93/20030829a.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  13. ^ Stewart, David (2005-02-11). "The Friday Interview: Tom Murphy, Boards.ie". Siliconrepublic.com. http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4427. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  14. ^ netvisionary.ie (2005-11-17). "L-R: IIA Chairman Colm Lyon, Category Award winner John Breslin of Boards.ie with Category Sponsor David Curtin of IE Domain Registry". http://www.netvisionary.ie/5awards11.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  15. ^ netvisionary.ie (2006-11-16). "IIA Chairman Colm Lyon, Online Trader winner John Breslin (boards.ie/adverts.ie) and Category Sponsor Stephen McDonagh of Realex Payments". http://www.netvisionary.ie/6awards6.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 
  16. ^ Ireland.com (2001-08-31). "2001 Zeddy Winners (Archive of Announcement)". http://johnbreslin.com/wiki/images/1/10/20010831a.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-11. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boards.ie"
Personal tools
Languages