Cyn,
You've touched on a trend I've watched develop firsthand.
In the early days (say 97 and 98) the resource part of webmaster sites were very important tool for networking. A newbie could come in and find what hosts would allow adult content, what programs were out there that would actually pay you for your traffic and (in the case of YNOTNetwork) a list of content providers that were prescreened to have the required 2257 docs...
IMO as folks built up their network of contacts for services they needed, they migrated to the boards in search of b2b contacts not as easily established just looking through listings. Heck, I remember cold calling whois numbers trying to get in contact with folks back in 96-97, just to 'meet' webmasters and establish working relationships. Bangwang and I hooked up in that manner and I swear that's the best phone call I ever made.
Anyway, as the bb boards grew in eyeballs watching, folks began to see the power of the shills. Asking for a good host (insert program, content provider or any other service in here) and then pluggin one (or several that were actually all the same company...lol).
Then the threaded/vbull and phpBB boards started; plus you had the 'sig' lines starting to allow banner/buttons. IMO this moved the importance of advertising from the standard top of page banner right into the content (conversations in this case). This gave rise to paid posters, drive bys, and short one sentence responses.
IMO that's where we are now resource wise. Other than newbies, many webmasters have built up a network of people to call upon for any item that might come up; be it on a board or in ICQ or on the phone.
Rather than looking at a listing of services, if they want to try something new they will go to their network and ask opinions first. And the ones they tend to ask opinions about are the 'new' things they see on the boards, not the new things they see in resource listings.
I spent around 7 years total doing the resource sections at YNOTNetwork, YNOTMasters and WebOverdrive and while I'm content to know I prolly helped alot of the successful folks today through my efforts, it's kinda sad to see that aspect of the industry slip by the wayside. But from a biz perspective I gotta look at it like the buggy manufacturer... Even if he was the best at it, his ass had to adapt or go bankrupt.
One thing that is different than it was back when the resource areas were popular. In say 98 a newbie could go to a board and post "I'm brand new, how can I do well". At that time those folks could be pointed to a ton of ways they could easily make good coin fairly quickly if they were willing to put a little effort into it... Now, I really do not think that's the case. Both from the ease of doing it and the effort they are willing to make.
Dunno how many of your questions these musings answered or if all they did was raise some more...lol
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