7/31/09

It's Alive!



ChopCult lives, at least in beta form. We are considering August the shakedown month for the site. Like a freshly built motorcycle, it all looks good in the garage, but things change once you get it out on the highway and shit starts falling off!

There is a lot to absorb on your first visit. It is a full-on social network, but without all the cheesy MySpace backgrounds and terrible art, but it's also feature-packed with news, bikes, forum, classifieds and other good stuff.

The Classifieds section is something I'm really stoked about, it can be searched, filtered and sorted like crazy. If you have a small business making custom cycle parts, this can be a great resource for you to gain access to an international audience without spending anything but some time. Of course, it'll work great for selling used stuff and bikes as well.

The News is content we'll bring you from around the world, bike features, interviews, shop tours, etc. We'll try to set the tone for the site here by featuring things that we think are of interest, not just commercialized press releases and boring stuff. If you want to contribute bike features or anything else, contact one of us through the site and we'll help figure it out.

The BlogDump is a curated feed of our favorite blogs from around the world. Each one streams in as soon as the blogger hits "send" on his end. We don't edit a thing or ask any special concessions. You are free to comment as you feel the need and hopefully you'll enjoy getting your latest blog fix in one centralized hub.

The Forum. These things are what you make them. Contribute in a meaningful way and it'll be useful for others. Our moderation policy is pretty simple; we don't plan on closing threads, if something goes sideways, we'll put it in the "Junk Pile" and you can continue bitching about baggers, religion or whatever. Threads that should not be forgotten will be placed in the "Greatest Hits" sub-forum after they run their course so new people won't have to search for them so hard. Otherwise, it'll be self-policing. If you see something you don't like, call it like you see it and don't have thin skin when someone else feels differently.

Thanks to the charter advertisers who signed on when the site was nothing but an idea. We're not selling google ads, against recommendations from people smarter than us, we just couldn't stand the idea of Viagra and Punch the President ads running on the site. Expect ads that are relevant to you and not more annoying internet advertising clutter.

The whole enterprise is a do-it-yourself work-in-progress, so expect it to change and evolve as we all learn from it. Hopefully it can grow into a resource that is meaningful and can help you enjoy your machine and the scene that surrounds it more. If nothing else, there should at least be some pretty pictures of motorcycles and no one can bitch about that!

-Bill
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2 comments :

Anonymous said...

Congrats! This is awesome.

Chris/Blue Collar Moto said...

I think you guys just made blogs obsolete!