For the DIY community

[kendallc23]

My name is Kendall and I have something that's fairly sensitive to discuss, but if you read my entire post you will see that I, being a frequent forum user myself, fully understand forum etiquette and am fully respecting it.

I own a tech company which I will not identify here, and so that my intentions are clear, my company's identity can only be seen by the moderators and owner who can see it by the extension on my email address to verify that my statements are legitimate. The benefit of the few users I could try to siphon with this single thread is very minimal to my company. Our intention is to create a long term relationship that we believe will be mutually beneficial for both this forum's owner, the community and ourselves. The only way our platform will be revealed is if the forum owner decides to allow the arrangement.

Now with that said, my company is a completely new kind of social platform that, while not replacing the hobby forum, does dramatically innovate certain aspects of it and therefore appeals to the same audience. Forums are for groups to speak together as a whole. Our platform is for people to create more engaging one-on-one relationships based upon similar activities, passions and interests. Unlike any other company making innovations in social networking, our platform was conceived one-hundred percent with diehard hobbyist in mind and will change the way hobbyists interact online. At the bottom of this post is a link to an anonymous Flickr image of our landing page, with blocked out names, to help explain our platform and so that you can see that this is something new and highly unique.

Over the next year my company will be visiting various conferences and expos for power tools and DIY as well as other hobbies. We will also be advertising on many forums such as this one. The only problem is, our platform is designed for all hobbies, and we currently can only focus our budget towards the most receptive hobby communities. So it first needs to be established if the power tool community is one of those communities. If it is, we intend to advertise on this site and if that is all we end up doing, that is fine. My strongest reason for approaching this forum, though, involves the forum owner and a potential partnership beyond a simple sponsorship of which we are confident will be well received. So if the forum owner will contact me we can discuss the matter further.

Eventually, one way or the other, many people in the power tool community will discover our company. But in the social space, the tone is often set by the earliest adopters, and we know that the forum community is the most upstanding and most knowledgeable kind of user to set the best tone within our own power tool community.

I hope that this isn't seen as a typical attempt to spam and won't be automatically dismissed as something that should be kicked. I'm requesting that decision to be left to the forum owner after they have heard what we are proposing. We want to be completely above board in our actions here, and once everything is revealed you will see that we are not a typical company in how radically and controversially pro-user and pro-fairness we are in our policies and practices.

Ask me any questions other than my company's identity and I will answer as transparently as possible.

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[PutnamEco]

If you want people on the bleeding edge of social media you should be trying to reach people there. Try Reddit or Slashdot if you want an opinion on what kind of chance you will have. They both have many posters who have considerable experience in online communities from both sides of the fence. The tool/DIY type forums people are late adopters and DON'T like change. There is always a falling out when ever any of the forums change, and it takes considerable time and effort to build any community. Even more so among the professional building trade communities.