Comments on: Disaboom – A Slick, Not-So-Pretty Website Ploy

By: Richard Roehm

Richard Roehm — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:13:16 +0000

Being a well known deaf and disability activist. I find the shadows casted by disaboom to be the same as those who scam others. I’d be very wary of their gimmicks and tricks and the mask they’re wearing.

There are many positive solutions for the disability issues, but they dont normally flaunt their feathers like a peacock like disaboom does.

By: Marty

Marty — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:06:36 +0000

Thank you all for your comments. I've finally posted a response, which can be read here.

By: Elita

Elita — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:45:22 +0000

I’ve been a member of disaboom for a few months and haven’t received a single piece of spam. All advertising is on the up and up, being completely visible as click-through advertising. No adware installs itself on my machine and nobody has asked me for money.

There’s nothing wrong with being a for-profit social networking site, IMO, as long as false claims aren’t made, and disaboom doesn’t say they’re not-for-profit.

Elita

By: Marty

Marty — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:11:19 +0000

Caneman, belated thanks for your comment. Time will tell, I guess, if Disaboom’s got staying power.

Lisa and MJ, thank you for your very thoughtful and well-written disagreements. I am happy to hear that automatic opt-in spam does not seem to be part of Disaboom’s agenda. I am interested in your other points as well, and regret that I won’t be able to manage an immediate response.

Rather than respond too quickly (and perhaps too superficially), I’ll hold off until after the first of the year, when I can re-evaluate my feelings about the site with care.

By: mj

mj — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:11:55 +0000

I currently use disaboom.com and am enjoying it so far. I gave them my real email address and haven’t received any spam so far. Of course, I read their terms and conditions first–they say they won’t sell people’s information. Since they’re a publically held company that statement is actually very reliable, since they could get in a hell of a lot of trouble if they break those terms.

I don’t really understand your gripe about them making money. The internet revenue model that seems to work best is give something quality away for free and make money from advertising (google, yahoo, etc). People with disabilities should probably be proud that our free market is taking notice of them and starting to serve them more. I mean, we do live in a capitolist society…

anyway, that’s my two cents — you’re dead wrong about the spam part and I think your reasoning about the money part is suspect.

respectfully,
mj

By: LisaDroesdov

LisaDroesdov — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:58:33 +0000

Found this on Disabled World while googling disaboom *waves* and I wanted to express the same opinion I did there. I found Disaboom a couple days ago and haven’t had any problems- no email spam, and everyone has been very friendly. Definitely some growing pains in website design, I mean, arrrgh, how hard does it have to be to FIND a blog post I want to read on the site? But it looks like they are in the process of a redesign (an employee posted that on the forums) and I’ll wait to pass judgement on the web design until I see the new version. I checked out their privacy policy and it doesn’t look like they sell information to advertisers unless you give express permission for them to do so in your profile. Did you find a reference that’s different? I would probably remove my account from the site if I found out that was true, but I can’t find anything that says that- a little confused as to where you got it from.

My biggest question is, if people get value from the site, make friends, get accurate information, etc., does it really matter if someone is making money by selling advertising? The language is a little yucky, but so is all marketing language, IMHO. If everyone has to be broke to provide good things to the community, then all those broke people will eventually get sick of being broke. I am not the most fond of corporations and do try to be careful how much I believe that companies tell me, but it seems to me that if someone can turn a profit while providing a valuable service that people enjoy, great! After all, nobody is forcing anyone to click ads.

-Lisa

By: Caneman

Caneman — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:51:55 +0000

I fully agree with your article – this disaboom website is most likely a tax loss/write off for a group of investors who will abandon the site after it fails to show a profit taking members money down with it.

As for their statement of being the first disability community online – Crap! Sites like lovebyrd and Disabled World were online years ago and are still running today.