Hello,

I am really sorry but unfortunately we do not have such migrators currently By the way, why would you want to go back to JomSocial?

I switched to EasySocial because it had Hashtags, and the announced coming soon feature 'Pages', and assumed that it would have video support already.
My site NEEDS videos, or I can not make any money. Pages would be nice, hashtags are cool, but videos are non-negotiable.

JomSocial also has a large collection of 3rd party extensions, that all work the way we expect them to work, where as NONE of the 3rd party extensions for EasySocial work the way we expect them to work (many of them do not work at all). In fact, you have decided to ignore the advice of your community, and partner with a company that is releasing bad extensions, and lying to your customer base.

Add in the fact that at this point EasySocial has not only missed the projected release schedule, it is several versions behind on anticipated release schedule at this point. Plus you guys are now moving features to later versions, and dropping features all together. I would prefer to just migrate back to JomSocial and go from there.

StackIdeas is awesome. EasySocial could one day be awesome. But the simple fact is that lack of basic features, and poor integrations from TechJoomla are going to kill EasySocial before it will get a chance to fully develop.

In fact, I am very close to just accepting the fact that I will have to delete my entire user base, entire website, and just start from the ground up.

Hello,

Hm, Sorry to hear that you are getting such experiences from these 3rd party vendors but to be fair, there is really nothing we can do about their business ethics. I have personally spoken to the lead developer and the manager from Techjoomla and they did insist that their software works as expected. I have never personally used it yet but I will definitely share this thread with them.

As for the videos, I have to agree that we missed the dateline for it but seriously, I would rather have it not released than having to release a half baked feature which isn't user friendly at all. If we were to go on updating the videos, it would take a longer time to progress and this will push the release date further and not something that everyone would be happy about

I really wish that you would give EasySocial 1.4 a try and hope that you will never lose faith EasySocial. If you have any issues that you face with these 3rd party extensions, please do let me know personally on Skype or you can write to me at mark AT stackideas.com and please elaborate more on the issues that you face with them so that I can start reaching out to everyone of them and understand the issue from both sides of the story.

Thanks for understanding and appreciate it very much.

With all due respect, it has now been more than 5 months since EasySocial 1.2 was released, and we are still waiting on EasySocial 1.3
Your asking me to hang in their till 1.4 just simply isn't going to happen, I already regret my purchase, and wish I could get a refund, there is simply no chance at all that I will purchase another subscription to get 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6 (all originally scheduled to be released within my subscription lifespan.)

I get that you guys have been working on multiple products, and all. But I have no interest in those other products, and those other products should not have effected EasySocial to the extent that they have.

I also get that you have no control over 3rd party extensions, but you have directly stated that you have no desire or intention to compete with 3rd party developers, and 3rd party developers are releasing faulty extensions that should be part of your core system anyways.

Simply put, I want out. I don't want to wait for EasySocial 1.4 I have waited long enough for 1.3 and the features I wanted from 1.3 have been removed, so why would I wait any longer?

I want a system that actually works. EasySocial just isn't it.

In fact, that is where I am at. I want a refund.
Please do not make me go through PayPal acquisition and resolution to get it.

I am really sorry but we are unable to provide you with a refund because our refund policy clearly states that refunds will only be provided within 30 days as stated our policy here, http://stackideas.com/refunds

Also, I don't quite get what you mean by "waited long enough" since you only purchased your license on July 3rd 2014 so I don't get what you mean by "waited for over 5 months" since you have only waited for less than 2 months?

If you are up for it, do write to me personally at mark AT stackideas.com and I will see if there is anything that can be done at all to get this issue resolved. As always, I am willing to listen and we could try to sort this matter out

You are also WAY more than 30 days behind on updates, and some of us had been waiting patiently. I will take it up with PayPal, and let them count it against you as well.

Oh I see what you did there by using the Payment Processor FastSprings! Well you will never get another dime from me, and I will be taking this to the highest authority that I can, most likely the Malaysian government.

Hey,

I have tried to compromise and I certainly do not want to get in an argument with any customers. If it makes you feel better by doing anything you posted above, by all means I am not going to stop you or have anything against you from doing this.

Have a great day!

Jthm0138 wrote:

... most likely the Malaysian government.

I think it's time for someone to take a time out, or a nap.

Justin wrote:

I think it's time for someone to take a time out, or a nap.

You probably don't want to play the insult game with me.
I am legally in the right here.

No worries here Jthm0138,

After reading your review of EasySocial on the JED, I'm sure JomSocial will take you back with open arms!

Well that was entertaining.

Justin wrote:

No worries here Jthm0138,

After reading your review of EasySocial on the JED, I'm sure JomSocial will take you back with open arms!

My review was "I have tried all of the Social Network solutions for Joomla! and EasySocial is absolutely the best there is. It is everything the others try to be and more. It is easy to install, easy to setup, and easy to use. Don't even bother looking at any of the others."

And at that point in time my review was accurate. It is however, no longer the case. There is also nothing said in that review that would cause JomSocial to not want me back, they most likely agreed with me (seeing as they have now gone through and added almost all of the features of EasySocial that they did not have).

Simple fact is that EasySocial still has a chance at being the best. But StackIdeas needs to wash their hands of inferior 3rd party companies, and needs to dedicate at least a small team to EasySocial and nothing else. A single team for 5 (i think) products is not going to work. Updates will be slow, and the resulting code will begin to suffer (as it already has).

There is no reason that StackIdeas can not fix any of this. They just have chosen not to. Part of it comes down to poor planning (as they have admitted several times). Part of it comes down to greed (by not pushing updates on time they can force people to buy more subscriptions). Part of it comes down to plain and simple incompetence (Video is a standard feature of social networking platforms, and to not have it is simply nothing less than incompetence). Part of it comes down to outright stubbornness (They can convert data from JomSocial to EasySocial, they can do it in the other direction as well, they just refuse to... This example also plays into greed and a power trip, they want to force us to continue using their products).

All that said, I would have been willing to give EasySocial another chance come version 1.6 or so, but if I have to fully uninstall everything, and lose my entire user base etc... so that I can go back to JomSocial for now, there is no chance that I will give EasySocial another shot later. It is not worth the time, and money.

Still think I need a nap?

Mark,

You tried your best to reach an accord, but sometimes some customers are "not a good fit," mainly because they want or need a certain feature that is just not available in EasySocial, and they can't wait any longer. This customer's sense of being wronged is something you spent time on to rectify, but they made their decision to go back to JomSocial, and sometimes you need not let this get you down and instead press forward with the tasks at hand to get your current projects completed, to please those loyal customers who are patient and understanding of delays. The customer has clearly stated they have made their decision to go back to Jomsocial if things don't change soon. Let the customer go back to JomSocial if they really want to go back. I do believe this customer is still willing to wait if some action is taken, (it is written in their posts) and if they do decide to go back to JomSocial, I do believe they will come back later as EasySocial evolves to suit their needs. JomSocial is an inferior product and always will be to EasySocial.

There is a reason why people are willing to be patient and wait. But don't fall into the same trap that other developers make. Shorter your development cycles, and focus on KEY features that are essential to the majority of customers, rather than adding the nice to have features that are not necessary at this time. Avoid FEATURE CREEP. Refine what you have and only add what is necessary.

VIDEO SUPPORT IN EASYSOCIAL
Video support is important to many of your loyal customers, and to those who want to migrate from other extensions. Those of us that have been with you since day one, and many of your loyal fans are patient and understanding for the delays, and we are all here to help make Video in version 1.4 a huge success. Leverage this excitement and take time to define what about the customer was out of sync with your business so you can avoid entering a similar relationship failure in the future.

To be successful it is best to know which customers are vital to your success
The 80/20 rule, known as the Pareto principle, recognizes that in any group, 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the participants. In business, that means 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of sales, while another 20 percent account for 80 percent of problems.

StackIdeas main task is to focus on the profitable 20 percent while not getting consumed by the demands of the costly few who can't wait for certain features to be available. Make it clear to potential customers that certain features critical to a FULL MIGRATION are not available. This should be easy to do since you understand JomSocial and know which features can't be migrated at this time. This will help to avoid people buying EasySocial to MIGRATE EVERYTHING from Jomsocial. This way the responsibility for the decision is on the customer making a choice to MIGRATE, and not your fault if some features are not available to make for a FULL MIGRATION.

Some Suggestions:

1. Post a Blog on MIGRATION from other extensions to EasySocial, listing what is available for FULL MIGRATION and what is NOT AVAILABLE for full migration. Then the customer can make an informed decision to wait or to MIGRATE. Clearly state that if they CHOOSE to MIGRATE from another extension, what you and your team WILL DO and NOT DO for them if delays happen that allow them to fully MIGRATE. Delays in software happen all the time. Good brews take time to nurture.

2. Post a second blog post on Videos and why it is not available in the forthcoming version 1.3, and what your focus of development for version 1.4 will contain for Video support. Video is essential to the majority of your customers. To accomplish this balancing act, listen to your loyal customers as you always do so well, and also take into account those that are discontented so you can right wrongs wherever possible. This may involve making version 1.4 more about getting Videos available sooner, rather than trying to add too many other not so essential features in version 1.4 that will delay the release for months. A SHORTER development cycle appears to be the best solution, and focus on what makes customers most pleased.

3. Maybe consider making EasySocial version 1.4 all about Videos, and then focus 1.5 on adding the other planned features. It's pretty easy to see that Videos is in high demand, but many of us could wait for other features in a future version. This will shorten your version 1.4 time to market cycle and make everyone happy.

Keep in mind that every minute you spend putting out fires because someone anticipated having a feature for a complete MIGRATION sooner than your team can meet their needs and demands, it is best to spend five minutes nurturing your most content and profitable customers. Otherwise, you'll spend most of your time tilting your business toward those who may never be entirely happy with your extensions because they want certain things that may not be available at a time of their liking.

By shifting away from costly customers (from all accounts those that want to MIGRATE from Jomsocial) you should spend more time defining your best customers--those who are most satisfied and most profitable, and with this loyal satisfied customer base you can nurture and attract more customers just like them. At the same time, define which customers cost your business time and profitability so you can take certain steps to avoid similar issues:

- Determine if you can revise pricing or policies to serve costly clients more profitably. Be specific about refund policies for those that CHOOSE to MIGRATE before all features for a FULL MIGRATION are available.
- If you can't serve costly customers profitably, because of FULL MIGRATION, then stop them from migrating and have them wait until FULL MIGRATION is available. Extending the same friendly service style you'd advance during a sale, summarize your understanding of the customer's wants and needs and outline in a weekly or bi-weekly Blog post about UPDATES, and how you plan to meet those MIGRATION needs so those that are waiting can gauge the best time to MIGRATE from another extension to become an EasySocial customer.

Randall

Randall,
The issue is not one of informed decision. The issue is one of making a purchase based on promises that have not been fulfilled.
StackIdeas made a promise to the community to include some features at specific intervals.
StackIdeas has failed to include said features, pushing them off till later intervals, or dropping them all together.

StackIdeas has dropped the ball. They have missed scheduled and promised updates by more than 60 days, and yet are refusing refunds based on a 30 day policy. If any of us were to do the same thing, people would call that fraud.

Jthm0138 wrote:

Still think I need a nap?

I guess what's most confusing is that you could be making money based on the fact that JomSocial has videos, so what's keeping you from using it until ES has that functionality and then migrate. Instead, you've elected to wait based on the RoadMap which was never set in stone, nor was there a guarantee that timelines would be met or your money back. I know how you feel - I too have been waiting for ES with Events, but I know this team is working hard and I can't afford to hire custom developers or do it myself since I wouldn't know where to begin. But I've worked with JomSocial in the past and decided, for me at least, that the long term investment would be to go with a team that offers exceptional customer support.

But back to your last question. If you still planning on going to the highest authority (that being the Malaysian government) over something like this...then yes.

Another simple solution would be to give all existing members a 6 month extension to their subscription as compensation for the poor planning efforts of StackIdeas. This is something that would also help to alleviate some of the buyers remorse that is going on. But I am willing to bet that my greed argument from before will prevent this from being a consideration.

Justin wrote:
But back to your last question. If you still planning on going to the highest authority (that being the Malaysian government) over something like this...then yes.

When a company is fundamentally apposed to working with you to correct a grievance, and the transaction in question was an international transaction, one is forced to resort to extreme measures, there are no less extreme options. I could file with the BBB, something that a company in Malaysia would not care about. I could file with PayPal, something that again a company using another final payment gateway will not care about. I could file with their payment gateway, something that again they will not care about unless I initiate a chargeback (something that also effects my credit score, and standing with my bank). So, My options are to file a complaint with the government, and hope that they can direct me to the Malaysian version of the BBB, something that StackIdeas will care about.

Mark wrote:

Hey,

I have tried to compromise and I certainly do not want to get in an argument with any customers. If it makes you feel better by doing anything you posted above, by all means I am not going to stop you or have anything against you from doing this.

Have a great day!

Jthm0138,

Randall,
The issue is not one of informed decision. The issue is one of making a purchase based on promises that have not been fulfilled.

- I do not recall Mark or his team making any PROMISES to make certain all features would be available in new versions. Each time I looked at the Roadmap, I saw this disclaimer: NOTE: Kindly please take note that the list here is not final and we may add or remove any functionality if we see fit.

Mark clearly stated why Videos would be delayed from version 1.3 to version 1.4.

Mark In reply to: Guest - miguel 3 hours ago REPLY
Hello Miguel,

Thanks for the heads up on this. EasySocial 1.4 will incorporate videos functionality as we are pretty tight in our schedule for this 1.3 release, we had to drop the support for videos as we think that the functionality is not in par with what we provide.

StackIdeas made a promise to the community to include some features at specific intervals.
StackIdeas has failed to include said features, pushing them off till later intervals, or dropping them all together.

- It's very obvious that you have never developed software before. I refer back to the disclaimer in the Roadmap for EasySocial:
Each time I looked at the Roadmap, I saw this disclaimer: NOTE: Kindly please take note that the list here is not final and we may add or remove any functionality if we see fit.

Mark obviously made a business decision to not include Videos in version 1.3 for a VERY GOOD REASON as far as I am concerned and most likely many are concerned. Why put out something that is half baked and delay version 1.3. For every hour spent reading and responding to people like you who have obviously become unreasonable as per some of the ridiculous comments that you have posted above:

Oh I see what you did there by using the Payment Processor FastSprings! Well you will never get another dime from me, and I will be taking this to the highest authority that I can, most likely the Malaysian government.

Clearly stated out of haste and anger. It shows your immaturity when you make such baseless statements. Try to focus on what you want from Mark. If you want a REFUND, then state you want a refund and leave it at that.

StackIdeas has dropped the ball. They have missed scheduled and promised updates by more than 60 days, and yet are refusing refunds based on a 30 day policy. If any of us were to do the same thing, people would call that fraud.

- I have followed this thread and watched your comments go from some solid valid comments based on your disappointment of missed deadlines for Videos, and then you have chosen to degenerate your posts into anger each time Mark tried to reason with you why things were delayed. What more do you want from Mark and StackIdeas Team? If you want a REFUND, than state clearly that you want a REFUND, and let this thread go so it no longer ties up Mark's valuable resources. Mark has better things to do than to waste time getting into spats with someone who gets angered because certain features that they need are not available. Try offering up solutions.

What about the vast majority of us that have been patient and understanding of the delays? Instead of jumping down Mark's back, why not focus your attention to positive suggestions and offer valid helpful things such as I have done above, so that Mark can consider them and make some decisions?

From what I have seen above, and what Mark last posted, he is more than willing to let you so what you have stated above. Never once have I seen him not say you would not be refunded. Heck, I will personally REFUND you if the StackIdeas Team doesn't refund you. Why would I make such a statement? Because I believe the StackIdeas Team will refund you as long as you follow the proper process.

Mark on Monday, August 25 2014, 06:10 PM #
Hey,
I have tried to compromise and I certainly do not want to get in an argument with any customers. If it makes you feel better by doing anything you posted above, by all means I am not going to stop you or have anything against you from doing this.
Have a great day!

QUOTE ABOUT FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVES

Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.
~ Denis Waitley

I suggest calming this down, and focus efforts and offer up positive suggestions to resolve this to everyone's satisfaction. This can only be done if you are willing to do so.

I leave you with a quote from Steve Jobs. He and I had many discussions back in the late 1990's about Apple and issues that affected 3rd Party developers and millions of customers. Had he let some customers get the best of him with their complaints, we wouldn't have the iPhone or the iPad. Sometimes there has to be acceptable loses in customers.

This is the same final question that Steve Jobs would ask you Jthm0138. He gave me a choice back in 1999 when he was in the midst of trying to turn Apple around. I was a pissed off 3rd Party Developer, but at least I was willing to listen to him and make good decisions based on what he had to say to me and many other disgruntled 3rd Party developers. He kept us informed, and sometimes what he said to us wasn't what we wanted to hear. He cut many products and projects out of necessity to simplify Apple back to the basics.

My question to you Jthm0138
Are you willing to remove yourself as a customer, and ask politely for a REFUND, or are you willing to work with Mark and the rest of us and be patient and understanding by offering up positive suggestions and solutions to see this resolved so we can all move mountains with EasySocial and EasyBlog? Or do you want to go back to an inferior has been product in JomSocial? It's your choice Jthm0138?

With or without you as a customer, Mark and his Team will continue to move forward in a positive fashion and succeed with EasySocial and EasyBlog and the rest of StackIdeas products. I have faith in them and their decisions. And sometimes their decisions are not the ones we all want to here at times, but Mark and his team make these decisions for reasons that best fit all customers, not just a select few.

QUOTE ABOUT FOCUS & SIMPLICITY
That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
~ Steve Jobs

Randall

Well said Randall!

Jthm0138 - You've been a good contributor to this forum based on your other posts. It would be a shame for you to go. Just for the heck of it, why not take Mark up on his offer of contacting him personally. I agree with Randall that a strong community can and will be a benefit to us all.

The issue with your logic Randall is that
1) I did clearly request a refund, and was denied.
and 2) StackIdeas has stopped moving forward with EasySocial. They are currently at a standstill, and have been for 5 months. IF EasySocial 1.3 ever comes out (I am guessing we will see a beta sometime this week, and maybe if we are lucky a final version sometime next month) it still does not add any new features worth mentioning. 5 1/2 months for 1.3 and no MAJOR features added? That is not progress, and once 1.3 is out how many months will we wait for 1.4? 3 months? 5 months? 7 months? A year maybe?

To get caught up with the current features available in JomSocial, EasySocial will have to make it to version 1.6, and by the time 1.6 comes around (probably close to a year or year and a half from now at current rate) JomSocial will have added even more features that EasySocial does not have. .... So what platform is my better option?

When EasySocial was pumping out versions and features on a steady basis they had a shot, now that they have slowed down they do not have a chance.

Justin wrote:

Well said Randall!

Jthm0138 - You've been a good contributor to this forum based on your other posts. It would be a shame for you to go. Just for the heck of it, why not take Mark up on his offer of contacting him personally. I agree with Randall that a strong community can and will be a benefit to us all.

Because as people have pointed out here taking him up on his offer would only slow down production further, and end with both Mark and Myself becoming more disgruntled with one another.

My community has dwindled from over 5,000 active users to less than 10 active users. 90% of the cause of this was loss of the video functionality.
Now luckily for me, I am the ONLY person in the world that can run a community like the one I run, so I can get all of those people back on my site in less than a month once I have videos. But bottom line being what it is 4,990+ members at $5 a month is costing me $24,950 a month that is a provable loss (the actual loss is much higher).

Can you see why I might be a little frustrated?

Jthm0138 wrote:

The issue with your logic Randall is that
1) I did clearly request a refund, and was denied.
and 2) StackIdeas has stopped moving forward with EasySocial. They are currently at a standstill, and have been for 5 months. IF EasySocial 1.3 ever comes out (I am guessing we will see a beta sometime this week, and maybe if we are lucky a final version sometime next month) it still does not add any new features worth mentioning. 5 1/2 months for 1.3 and no MAJOR features added? That is not progress, and once 1.3 is out how many months will we wait for 1.4? 3 months? 5 months? 7 months? A year maybe?

To get caught up with the current features available in JomSocial, EasySocial will have to make it to version 1.6, and by the time 1.6 comes around (probably close to a year or year and a half from now at current rate) JomSocial will have added even more features that EasySocial does not have. .... So what platform is my better option?
When EasySocial was pumping out versions and features on a steady basis they had a shot, now that they have slowed down they do not have a chance.

1) I did clearly request a refund, and was denied. - Let's see what Mark has to say about your request for refund in a few hours. I do believe Mark was trying his best to keep you as a customer, but if you want to go back to JomSocial, then by all means go back to JomSocial, and let Mark focus with his team on providing solutions to customers that understand things don't happen over night.

2) StackIdeas has stopped moving forward with EasySocial. They are currently at a standstill, and have been for 5 months. IF EasySocial 1.3 ever comes out (I am guessing we will see a beta sometime this week, and maybe if we are lucky a final version sometime next month) it still does not add any new features worth mentioning. 5 1/2 months for 1.3 and no MAJOR features added? That is not progress, and once 1.3 is out how many months will we wait for 1.4? 3 months? 5 months? 7 months? A year maybe?

=====
These are your opinions, but I do believe they are not the opinion of the vast majority of customers. You have stated your opinions and they are duly noted for all to see, including Mark and his team. I do believe those of us that understand why it is important to have patience and offer up positive solutions to encourage and help support Mark and his team fully appreciate that World Class software development comes with unexpected delays. Even the best laid plans don't always work as planned. Software development is always evolving, and is never static.

To get caught up with the current features available in JomSocial, EasySocial will have to make it to version 1.6, and by the time 1.6 comes around (probably close to a year or year and a half from now at current rate) JomSocial will have added even more features that EasySocial does not have. .... So what platform is my better option?
When EasySocial was pumping out versions and features on a steady basis they had a shot, now that they have slowed down they do not have a chance.

Once again this is your opinion and you have stated that you have a option decision to make. I suggest you ask for your Refund here without all the other stuff being added: Something like this: Mark, I have made a decision to ask you for a REFUND. How can I best work with you to get my refund?

As said these opinions are your opinions, but they are not the opinion of the vast majority of us here. I do believe that Mark stated why development of EasySocial 1.3 was delayed. It was impacted by concurrent development with EasyBlog 5 and splitting things into two teams and this was a major development decision and effort, and Mark has also stated they learned some lessons from making such a development decision. When EasySocial 1.3 and EasyBlog 5 becomes available, many of us who have been patient and understanding of the delays in EasySocial 1.3 will be praising Mark and his Team. I am sure as said above, that the JomSocial team will welcome you with open arms.

Enough said on this. I think it best to let Mark respond. Then he can focus with his team and loyal supporters on the positives of moving forward.

Randall

Randall M wrote:
Enough said on this. I think it best to let Mark respond. Then he can focus with his team and loyal supporters on the positives of moving forward.

Randall

Fair enough. I am willing to wait a few hours and let Mark respond again. But if/when he responds and nothing changes, am I then justified to continue with my stated course of action?

Jthm0138 wrote:

My community has dwindled from over 5,000 active users to less than 10 active users. 90% of the cause of this was loss of the video functionality.
Now luckily for me, I am the ONLY person in the world that can run a community like the one I run, so I can get all of those people back on my site in less than a month once I have videos. But bottom line being what it is 4,990+ members at $5 a month is costing me $24,950 a month that is a provable loss (the actual loss is much higher).

Can you see why I might be a little frustrated?

So, just to be clear, you had an existing (or potential) revenue stream of $25,000 / month when you were using JomSocial before you made the switch to a product that you knew didn't have video capability (and based on your twitter account, I think I have a good idea regarding the topic of the community)?

I could see your frustration, but from a business standpoint, I'm wondering why you would have done such a thing when, as you state in your earlier point, you NEED video as part of your community's core?

When I made the switch it was not clear that EasySocial did not have video support. In fact there was a previously existing conversation regarding video parsing that helped to confuse the topic and make it appear that EasySocial had better video support than it did.

Jthm0138 wrote:

Justin wrote:

Well said Randall!

Jthm0138 - You've been a good contributor to this forum based on your other posts. It would be a shame for you to go. Just for the heck of it, why not take Mark up on his offer of contacting him personally. I agree with Randall that a strong community can and will be a benefit to us all.

Because as people have pointed out here taking him up on his offer would only slow down production further, and end with both Mark and Myself becoming more disgruntled with one another.

My community has dwindled from over 5,000 active users to less than 10 active users. 90% of the cause of this was loss of the video functionality.
Now luckily for me, I am the ONLY person in the world that can run a community like the one I run, so I can get all of those people back on my site in less than a month once I have videos. But bottom line being what it is 4,990+ members at $5 a month is costing me $24,950 a month that is a provable loss (the actual loss is much higher).

Can you see why I might be a little frustrated?

Jthm0138,

Yes I can see your frustration, but____ all businesses require

We all have our stories about what we need and why we need them. Perhaps rather than laying most of the blame on Mark and his team for delays that may have cost you your user base, accept some responsibility that you made a poorly timed business decision to MIGRATE over the EasySocial too soon. Many people are concurrently developing a new site and have kept their old JomSocial site online, and will migrate to EasySocial when all feature needs deemed necessary are met.

We all make mistakes. Over the course of your professional life, you can count on making a few bad business choices. It comes with the territory, but don't let the mistakes that you made in the past really drag you down. Recovering from YOUR MISTAKE to MIGRATE your revenue based site TOO SOON before ALL FEATURES for FULL MIGRATION were available and tested is definitely not a trivial matter. It's a tough nut to swallow. Trust me, I have made blunders before that were very costly (in the millions of dollars back in my Apple software development days) but I learned from those bad decisions. I believe you can recover and move forward based on making clear well informed decisions now. I do believe you are willing to work with Mark and be supportive, but you need some encouragement. That's what this forum is for, to best support the team and encourage each other when mistakes happen to get us down.

There's nothing worse than failing by your own hand, your own hubris, your own decisions to make a major change to your site. But it doesn't mean giving up. It means taking the time to make a clear logical decision now to stick with EasySocial or go back to that has been extension of JomSocial.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
~ Albert Einstein

It's Not the Failure That Matters...

Jazz great Miles Davis once said, "When you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that makes it good or bad."
I suggest you add a little self-confidence and courage, and be positive in your discussions with Mark, because I really do believe it's all you need to recover from even the worst blunders. You stated above that once you have Videos fully supported on your EasySocial based site, you can get your user base back on your site.

I believe if you suck it up, put the past mistakes made behind you as lessons learned and offer up your best suggestions forward, and stick with Mark and his Team and fully support him and the Team in their efforts to get Videos into version 1.4 as quickly as humanly possible, you can recover from your losses and that it will turnout to be the smartest business decision you will ever make. This can expand your horizons, teach you new skills you need, and open a path that would soon lead to an exciting new site where you can gather all the right customers. JomSocial has nothing groundbreaking, because if it did, you would never have chosen EasySocial and nor would have I or many others.

Imagine having something in Videos that has never been done before on any Social based site! Take a look at this new discussion that I started last week and how many people have contributed by offering up their best suggestions and ideas to make Videos in v1.4 something cool and unique beyond what any other social networking software offers today. Your suggestions and contributions can make ES 1.4 with Videos somethign way beyond what going back to JomSocial could ever offer you.

ES 1.4 Video Features Discussion: Video Series Playlists and more
http://stackideas.com/forums/es-1-4-video-features-discussion-video-series-playlists-and-more

Everything Comes Full Circle

This single mistake--the risk you took by choosing to migrate your site too soon--and more importantly, the decision that you need to make now to double down and take an even bigger risk, will ultimately make all the difference in your future and that of your site.

We all make mistakes. If we don't, we're not taking enough risks. Executives with big responsibility for major companies like Microsoft and Oracle, and such sometimes make big mistakes. It comes with the territory of being in business. It's about the choices.

I suggest not to allow yourself to wallow in it or lament what could have been. Just pick yourself up, gain whatever wisdom you can from this experience, accept it as the new reality, and go from there. You're still fully capable of recovering from this and in the band. Play your next note.

I made a bad costly business decision back in late 2010. I have learned from that mistake and now I am on the right path to success.
I have been patiently waiting for years since my failed efforts with JomSocial cost me a huge business loss, but I accepted it as my own poor business decision to base everything on JomSocial. This time around I have channeled my efforts into focusing on making positive decisions based on calculated risks. I believe in Mark and followed him to his new company back in 2011 after he left the JomSocial team as lead developer. I am 100% fully SUPPORTIVE of Mark and his Team, and I do believe that once version 1.3 of EasySocial is released, I can finally launch my site. I have been focused on other positive things while I wait for Event and Video support, and I will inform my user base that the feature of Videos is forthcoming and I will move things forward by continuing to make good informed patient business decisions. I have been patient for almost 4 years, and I am certain my decisions to support and remain loyal to Mark and his Team and their excellent StackIdeas extensions is going to pay off for me on the success of my site.

I do believe as said above by Justin in what he wrote: You have been and still can be a solid good contributor to make EasySocial all it can be Jthm0138.

Justin wrote:

Well said Randall!

Jthm0138 - You've been a good contributor to this forum based on your other posts. It would be a shame for you to go. Just for the heck of it, why not take Mark up on his offer of contacting him personally. I agree with Randall that a strong community can and will be a benefit to us all.

EasySocial 1.3 will be available some time this week. If we all focus our support to Mark and his team with good beta testing and feedback we can make EasySocial 1.3 solid for release sooner than most would think. Your support and beta testing skills and feedback Jthm0138 are most welcome. Perhaps Mark will consider focusing EasySocial 1.4 mostly on Video support, and pushing back some of the planned 1.4 features for version 1.5 to get V 1.4 out the door sooner? I do believe we can convince him of this if we all stay positive and supportive and focused.

Randall

Jthm0138 wrote:

When I made the switch it was not clear that EasySocial did not have video support. In fact there was a previously existing conversation regarding video parsing that helped to confuse the topic and make it appear that EasySocial had better video support than it did.

It has always been made clear from Mark that Video support for full migration from JomSocial was not yet available. Rather than debate what you just said or what you thought existed, I offer this up to you for your consideration:

Essential Steps in Decision Making: Evaluate and Learn

It’s useful to review how successful the decision has been, and the effectiveness of the decision making process.

Monitor these by asking:

1. How will you evaluate the success of the decision?
2. How can you improve on the decision making process?
3. What did you do well?
4. What can be improved?
5. What are you now able to do that you couldn’t in the past, before implementing the decision?


OCCAM'S RAZOR says the Simple answer is: The one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. TRUST by VERIFY.

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor and in Latin lex parsimoniae) is a principle of parsimony, economy, or succinctness used in problem-solving devised by William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347). It states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.

Randall

Videos is a major feature of 1.3 that has now been pushed off till 1.4, and I agree at this point Videos needs to be a core focus of 1.4 if EasySocial is going to stand any chance of being the dominant social networking solution for Joomla! again.

However, the 'all but abandoned' Pages feature really needs to be added back in to the coming soon list (preferably in 1.4 or at most 1.5 release.)

Also other major things that should be high on the priority list for EasySocial 1.4 are "Ability to specify a site image", "Ability to add multiple user's as friend", "Affinity system (whatever that actually will end up being)", "Reminder for inactive users", and the 1.5 features of "Welcome e-mail after registration", "Content plugin to display fields", "Extended EasySocial Menu Module", and from 1.6 "Banning Users", "Intelligent submenu", and "Privacy dropdown".

This list of features is what is needed simply to play catch up with JomSocial. Everything else on the lists will help extend EasySocial to things that JomSocial can not do, but if you can't do what it can do, then there is simple no point. The above list should logically be the focus list for 1.4 (I kind of understand why it is not, but from a feature vs. feature point of view it should be).

Jthm0138 wrote:

Videos is a major feature of 1.3 that has now been pushed off till 1.4, and I agree at this point Videos needs to be a core focus of 1.4 if EasySocial is going to stand any chance of being the dominant social networking solution for Joomla! again.

However, the 'all but abandoned' Pages feature really needs to be added back in to the coming soon list (preferably in 1.4 or at most 1.5 release.)

Also other major things that should be high on the priority list for EasySocial 1.4 are "Ability to specify a site image", "Ability to add multiple user's as friend", "Affinity system (whatever that actually will end up being)", "Reminder for inactive users", and the 1.5 features of "Welcome e-mail after registration", "Content plugin to display fields", "Extended EasySocial Menu Module", and from 1.6 "Banning Users", "Intelligent submenu", and "Privacy dropdown".

This list of features is what is needed simply to play catch up with JomSocial. Everything else on the lists will help extend EasySocial to things that JomSocial can not do, but if you can't do what it can do, then there is simple no point. The above list should logically be the focus list for 1.4 (I kind of understand why it is not, but from a feature vs. feature point of view it should be).

Jthm0138,

I see a much better more positive approach from you that will result in good things to come.

May I suggest making the following format changes to your list to make it easy for Mark to see your most needed 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 list of features: As suggested above, perhaps it would satisfy most people if version 1.4 focused most on Video support and the other features take place in Version 1.5 and v 1.6 or a longer version 1.5 development cycle. Shorter development cycles with less features and focus on the most important needed by the most users is most preferred.

Also other major things that should be high on the priority list for EasySocial 1.4 are:

1. Video support with - add your features that Video must support below in a) b) c) d)
a)
b)
c)
d)

2. "Ability to specify a site image",
3. "Ability to add multiple user's as friend",
3. "Affinity system (whatever that actually will end up being)",
4. "Reminder for inactive users",

Major things that should be high on the priority list for EasySocial 1.5 are:

1. "Welcome e-mail after registration",
2. "Content plugin to display fields",
3, "Extended EasySocial Menu Module"

4? Pages feature really needs to be added back in to the coming soon list (preferably in 1.4 or at most 1.5 release.)

Based on everything that I have read and seen to date, this version 1.5 is most likely where Mark will consider adding Pages: That will be up to Mark.

Major things that should be high on the priority list for EasySocial 1.6 are:

1. "Banning Users",
2. "Intelligent submenu",
3. "Privacy dropdown".

Pleased to see you offering up positive suggestions again.

Randall

Oh, sorry, I think you misunderstood my last post.
It was still a criticism of the way things are going.
I have already started the active process of pulling my site apart in preparation for rebuilding it again with JomSocial, or possibly Dolphin, or another non Joomla! solution.

Let there be no mistake, StackIdeas has lost my business, and has almost 0% chance of gaining it back again. I am willing to hear Mark out over the next few days, as any meaningful conversation over the internet could take some time, but at this point the ball is in his court, and it is his move. If StackIdeas would like to retain a customer, they must make the next steps.

I have even offered some ideas on what those steps could be, from refunding my purchase, to extending my subscription to include the updates that will have the features I actually subscribed in anticipation of, to offering a solution to easily migrate back and forth between a solution that will work for me for now, until EasySocial will work for me at some point in the future.

There has been a very valuable lesson learned here, and regardless of what system I use to rebuild my site with, I will be testing all the needed functionality first in an isolated environment.

But as for now, I am done with EasySocial. Probably done with all companies not based in the United States, and most likely done with any company that does not use PayPal as a direct payment gateway. Absolutely done with any company that is not in the US AND doesn't use PayPal, one of the two is going to be an absolute requirement from now on.

The following sounds like it may solve some of the issue faced today by the StackIdeas Team to satisfy the most customer and their needs:

I suggest that the StackIdeas Team transition as suggested below by Ash Maurya from a traditional development process to Continuous Deployment. As he staes and illustrates so well, the key concept in Continuous Deployment is switching from large batch sizes to small batch sizes.

Excerpt:
3 Rules for Building Features in a Lean Startup
Written by Ash Maurya
http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/04/3-rules-for-building-features-in-a-lean-startup/

Validated learning about customers is the measure of progress in a Lean Startup – not lines of working code or achieving product development milestones.
So lets take a look at where in the product development process do we do this type of learning:

Where we learn about customers


While some learning happens during the requirements stage (driven by customer development activities), most of the learning happens only after we ship a release, with very little learning during development and QA.

Even though building a product is the purpose of a startup, product development actually gets in the way of learning about customers.
While we can’t eliminate development/QA or increase customer learning during those stages, we can shorten the cycle time from requirements to release so we get to the learning parts faster. That is exactly what Continuous Deployment does.



I’ve written about my transition from a traditional development process to Continuous Deployment as a case-study on Eric Ries’ Startup Lessons Learned blog. The key concept in Continuous Deployment is switching from large batch sizes to small batch sizes. For me that meant switching from releasing every 2 weeks to releasing every day. You can’t always build a feature in a day but you get good at building features incrementally and deploying non-user facing feature first. The result was an immediate and noticeable improvement in cycle time, an acceleration in feedback, and most importantly more time for non-product development activities like learning.

But even with a streamlined product development flow, how do you make sure you’re actually building what customers want and not simply cranking out features faster.

Rule 1: Don’t be a feature pusher

If you’ve followed a customer discovery process, identified a problem worth solving, and as a result defined a minimum viable product, don’t push any new features until you’ve validated the MVP. This doesn’t mean you stop development, but rather most of your time should be spent measuring and improving existing features and not chasing after new shiny features.



Ideally, a new feature must be pulled by more than one customer for it to show up in the backlog. It is okay to experiment with some new features that come straight out of your head but I still try and find ways to test them with a few customers first (in a demo, product presentation) before committing them to the backlog.
Passion around a vision is good.
Passion around building what customers want is better.
The number of features in-progress is constrained by the number of developers and so is the number of features waiting for validation. This ensures that you cannot work on a new feature until a previously deployed feature has been validated.

Read more...
http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/04/3-rules-for-building-features-in-a-lean-startup/

Randall M wrote:

The following sounds like it may solve some of the issue faced today by the StackIdeas Team to satisfy the most customer and their needs:
Read more...
http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/04/3-rules-for-building-features-in-a-lean-startup/

Also, the forum here needs a 'Like' feature, so we can like posts.

This video outlines Why Products Fail and How to Make sure They Don't Fail to Meet the Needs of the Customer.

The NUMBER ONE REASON why PRODUCTS FAIL is: Developers waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.

ie: Should StackIdeas be building and focusing their time, money and efforts on a social networking product that satisfies the needs of migrating dis-satisified Jomsocial customers? The customer/product MIGRATION TRAP.

"It's not your customer''s problem to know what they want." ~ Steve Jobs

WATCH THIS VERY INFORMATIVE EXCELLENT VIDEO

Why Startups (Products) Fail
Ash Maurya

Published on Jan 23, 2013
We live in an age of unparalleled opportunity for innovation. We're building more products than ever before, but most of them fail. What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That is what this video will cover.



As stated in the video, being first to market with JomSocial puts Jomsocial at a distinct disadvantage, as long as StackIdeas doesn't get caught up in being a fast follower to build out EasySocial into yet another better Jomsocial or Facebook clone.

This is why Videos for EasySocial version 1.4 is SO IMPORTANT and why it is important to not get caught up in trying to satisfy Jomsocial MIGRATION customers over the needs of the many more loyal customers who see EasySocial being so much more than a Jomsocial migration path clone.

What solution or PAIN POINT does Videos solve? How is it going to solve that Pain Point?

Randall

To be perfectly honest, built in video support is a complete waste of StackIdeas time, and it always has been. I pointed this out once before, but got ignored.

StackIdeas should just pick one of the many free video options already available for joomla! and simply build a full featured seamless integration for that video system. My suggestion was http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/multimedia/multimedia-players/video-players-a-gallery/19866 but that was simply a suggestion and not any form of advice. The logic being StackIdeas already has a basic video parser, and already has a generic stream and point integration API, how hard would it be for them to build something like this? Maybe 2 days worth of work? But instead they would like to focus on taking months to plan their video support and even longer to program it.

The same logic applies to most of the other feature suggestions that are listed, most of the functionality is already there. It is just a case of needing some relatively minor code changes from StackIdeas to get these things working, but they would rather reinvent the wheel, so to say.

Question @Jthm0138

But as for now, I am done with EasySocial.

So, are you giving up on EasySocial and going back to JomSocial or some other solution then?

This is a question that you should answer definitively rather than cast further blame and insults towards the hard working supportive StackIdeas Team for your poor business decision. I have better things to do rather than try to convince you to stay and be supportive of Mark and his team if you have made your mind up.

So what is it going to be? Choose one and stick to that choice.

1. I am done with EasySocial, and want a full refund. And I won't come back.

2. I am in need of some sleep, and reacting out of frustration, and I think it best to wait and see what Mark has to say before commenting more or making my decision.

Randall

To reference a little humor here...
I have always got a good chuckle out of The Darwin Awards. Perhaps there should be a similar site dedicated to those that make poor business decisions and then lambaste and blame others for their poor choices and mistakes in making ill-informed business decisions.

It could be called: The Babylon Awards

The Richest Man in Babylon is a book by George Samuel Clason which dispenses financial advice through a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon. Through their experiences in business and managing household finance, the characters in the parables learn simple lessons in financial wisdom. Originally, a series of separate informational pamphlets distributed by banks and insurance companies, the pamphlets were bound together and published in book form in 1926.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon_(book)

Keep this in mind as foood for thought before being too critical of Mark and his team:
Nobody made you use EasySocial before it was capable of supporting your needs. The decision to switch to EasySocial from a money producing JomSocial site with 5,000 or so members was your choice, and your choice alone. Accept your decision as a bad lesson learned and stop wasting Marks' valuable time with your complaining about features that you thought were there in EasySocial when they we in fact never promised as you state above.

The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it...
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/

The Babylon Awards would salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who made bad business decision choices that wound up accepting responsibility for those mistakes and learned from those valuable lessons to go on to achieve success...

Randall M wrote:
So, are you giving up on EasySocial and going back to JomSocial or some other solution then?

At this current moment in a 'Black and White' world, I am done with EasySocial, and would like a refund.

This does not mean that I would not look at EasySocial again further down the line when it is a more complete product.

But as of the current state of things EasySocial is not a product that will work for my use, and honestly I don't think it is a product that anyone is truly honestly happy with. I think you will find that EVERYONE wants at least a few of the features discussed in this thread before they would consider EasySocial a complete product.

Now, onto the question of will I actually come back? That is 100% dependent on how Mark handles this situation once he comes back.
As stated before, he could:
1) Refund my purchase
2) Extend my subscription to include the updates that will have the features I actually subscribed in anticipation of.

If neither of these things are done, I will not be coming back, ever.
I will also most likely stop using Joomla! and all products associated with it. My interactions with StackIdeas, TechJoomla, and a handful of other major players in the Joomla! community have left me very dissatisfied with the entire Joomla! community as a whole. The Joomla! community has got to have the worst ethics of any open source community in the entire history of open source.

@Jthm0138

Based on your comments above (many of which I think are unfounded) I suggest you just stick to asking for a FULL REFUND from Mark, and move on to another open-source platform.

Mark and the rest of the StackIdeas Team have impeccable ethics in customer relations and they bend over backwards for many customers, but many of us have seen Mark and his Team been unfairly castigated by a few customers that expect far too much. In the past year it has been associated with JomSocial to EasySocial MIGRATION and then having people complain because they feel mistreated. I personally feel your statement about Joomla! community having the worst ethics of any open source community in the entire history of open source. This is your opinion, and I do believe it is out of line when it comes to StackIdeas Team based on what I have learned today about you and your choice to switch to EasySocial from Jomsocial, based on your own decisions.

Sometimes it is best to FIRE a customer than to bend over backwards and give in to unreasonable demands. If I was in charge, I would FIRE YOU as a customer, and give you a full refund and ask you to kindly not come back. Your attitude is not one that is conducive to community building. Essentially you are a brat and unreasonable. I would ask you your age, but my guess is most likely right. Adults don't act like you do.

I for one believe that it is not in the StackIdeas team best interests to meet your demands of #2 to be forced into extending your subscription to keep you as a customer, as that would not sit well with other customers who paid for a yearly subscription based on their sound business decisions, as it would open up this type of abuse to allow others to consider this type of action should they have a complaint. Then others would ask for a subscription extension.

The StackIdeas Team should not have to suffer for your poor business decision to switch to EasySocial from JomSocial, because of YOUR decisions to switch before EasySocial had all the features you needed to MIGRATE your users to meet your business objectives. They should not have to accept your unreasonable demands to keep you as a customer by extending your subscription. It is tantamount to holding a gun to their head, without you having any bullets to fire. Your arguments are baseless by your own admissions, yet you still make demands of Mark and his team that many would most likely feel are unreasonable.

Now, onto the question of will I actually come back? That is 100% dependent on how Mark handles this situation once he comes back.
As stated before, he could:
1) Refund my purchase
2) Extend my subscription to include the updates that will have the features I actually subscribed in anticipation of.

If neither of these things are done, I will not be coming back, ever.

Mark, it's up to you. I am willing to PAY for the refund should you decide to give this person a full refund. Why?

So this type of thing stops wasting your valuable time so you can focus on more positive things that positively affect the majority of your customers. It always seems to be the JomSocial migration people that complain the most. This happened last year, and it is time to stop wasting valuable resources and time on those Jomsocial users who have decided to MIGRATE to EasySocial without THINKING THINGS THROUGH FIRST. You made a decision and it was not your best decision. And Mark and his team have made development cycle decisions that Mark feels best fir the needs of the majority of customers. I for one, applaud Mark for making these type of decisions. He always listens to customers, but when it comes to the unreasonable ones, my suggestion is to FIRE YOU and do it QUICKLY, and move on to more positive things. Your wasting everyone's valuable time Jthm0138.

I will wait for Mark's remarks and what he has to say. I hope he considers my suggestion to FIRE you as a Customer based on your remarks above.

Randall

Randall,
I will not accept a refund from you, as you are not associated with StackIdeas.

Also, the fact that this is not the first time this has happened just makes me feel more conviction in my cause.

All of that being said, I am also the kind of person who will sell my car, sell my house, and hire the best lawyer I can find to fight something that won't even come close to justifying the costs involved, because I believe in fighting for what is right, and not worrying about the bottom line. I will fully tank my entire movie company to push this fight if I have to.

Good luck, Jthm0138

Sell your car, sell sell your house, and hire the best lawyer. You might also want to contact the newspapers, and anyone else that will listen to you complain when you make such ridiculous statements. NOBODY IS LISTENING!

@Jthm0138 - I don't buy it for a second. If you had "conviction" you wouldn't have bet the farm on software that doesn't suit your needs. You would have contracted custom developers to keep that 25K+ cash stream flowing and maybe even use your movie company connections to source out industry level video sharing integration. Instead, your lawyers will be busy with the Malaysian government...all for a refund of $85 and the cold hard fact that you won't take the blame for overreacting.

I have done a lot of research on business law in Malaysia, and I can assure everyone that Mark is not interested in having the Minister of Domestic Trade, nor the Minister of International Trade & Industry, get a phone call from me. From what I can tell Malaysia has some very draconian laws regarding business, and they are not fans of having people call them. +1 for controlled markets.

Justin wrote:

@Jthm0138 - I don't buy it for a second. If you had "conviction" you wouldn't have bet the farm on software that doesn't suit your needs. You would have contracted custom developers to keep that 25K+ cash stream flowing and maybe even use your movie company connections to source out industry level video sharing integration. Instead, your lawyers will be busy with the Malaysian government...all for a refund of $85 and the cold hard fact that you won't take the blame for overreacting.

You are probably right, I am probably overreacting. The question at this point is who has more to lose? I will lose a total of $99 and 3 maybe 4 months worth of income from a single section of my company. Mark on the otherhand could refund $99 and avoid a lot of trouble, or sit back and see if I am really willing to push the issue or not. But seeing as he has loyal fan boys egging me on, and backing me into a corner, I am really left with no choice but to push as hard as I can push. Probably worth the $99 to him to just shut me up.

It think this video will identify the situation here.

How to Handle Chronic Complainers

If you manage a chronic complainer, you know how frustrating all that negativity can be. Get some solid management tips that will help you handle chronic complainers -- and improve the working environment and team morale.

But then we start to get into another ethics question.
Is sending me my $99 back enough to shut me up?
Absolutely would have been at the start of this conversation, at this point, I am not sure. I might have more fun trying to destroy someones life. Evil is as Evil does after all.

The best way to SHUT YOU UP is to NOT PAY ANY MORE ATTENTION TO YOU AND YOUR CONSTANT COMPLAINING.

I have a good hunch that: You could get into TROUBLE in an EMPTY ROOM.

Randall M wrote:

The best way to SHUT YOU UP is to NOT PAY ANY MORE ATTENTION TO YOU AND YOUR CONSTANT COMPLAINING.

I have a good hunch that: You could get into TROUBLE in an EMPTY ROOM.

And yet here you are, still replying to my posts. I have spent the entire day with 2 packs of cigarettes, a bottle of vodka, and keyboard, watching Dr. Who and having an inflammatory conversation with you. Time well spent on my end. But what have you accomplished today?

So, now that the other posts appear to have stopped, and I can (hopefully) stop trolling the thread, there are some valid points throughout this thread Mark, but honestly I would suggest not even bother to try and read it. Just let me know when a good time to talk to you would be, so we can have an actual grownup conversation without your fans getting involved (or mine for that matter... i.e. twitter). And MAYBE, just maybe the two of us can actually work this out.

Also Mark,
You need a private message system on your site so that we can avoid unpleasantness like this in the future. It always muffs up the works when non-associated individuals attempt to get in the middle of a conversation that they have no place being in to begin with.

Hello guys,

I'm Justin, from Stack Ideas's marketing team. When I first came into the office, I've received multiple notifications for this thread and when I checked it, boy was I in for a surprise.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very informative thread from the Marketing team's point of view; we're getting feedback from multiple-users pertaining to our planning, business models etc. This will seriously helps u to become a better and stronger establishment. For this, I thank all of you; Randall, Justin, and Jthm0138, for all of your inputs.

Let's move on the the core topic-of-discussion.

From what I understand, @Jthm0138 was frustrated due to the fact that 'Videos' are moved from EasySocial 1.3 to EasySocial 1.4. I can and would love to elaborate more on the reason for this, but it will not do any good to all of us. Suffice for me to say that 'Events' are taking up most of our resources. As Mark have said, we prefers to ship something which is done, instead of something which is half-baked. This is the main reason as to why we have no choice but to push 'Videos' to 1.4. We could just ship half-baked 'Events', 'Videos', and awaits the massive bug reports from our users. However, we believe that this practise is the true practice that is based on greed and have little respect to our users.

We wishes for everyone to be happy when they are using our product, even if it means we would have to face trolls and flames.

As for the "reverse-migration" issue, I'll just be straight honest with you guys; I'm not really a techie (marketing guy, you don't say!). From the marketing point of view; if the EasySocial team builds a 'JomSocial - EasySocial migrator', then it would also be logical for the JomSocial team to build an 'EasySocial - JomSocial migrator'. During my time serving JomSocial, I do not remember any discussion about this, perhaps you can share this idea with the JomSocial team.

As for your license, @Jthm0138, I can see that you've made your purchase on the 3rd of July 2014. This baffles me as to why did you mention about waiting for 5 months. Mark have inquired about the same thing and it appears that you did not answer his question but rather tried to point the blame to him again. Upon further inspection, I finally realise that you were actually one of our awesome bug tester who were given a free license in exchange for your superb bug reports. Mark was so impress with your reports that he's willing to share with you a free license.

Having said that, it would sadden the team should you have decided to go and leave us. I would be more than happy to have you on-board with us as one of our bug tester. However, the solutions that you've provided to us are just not doable. You've past your 30-days-money-back-guarantee period and we are unable to extend your license. Kindly take note that the 30-days-money-back-guarantee is not a guarantee that you will get FUTURE FEATURES, but rather it's a guarantee that you will get the current features that are advertised to public; roadmaps are future features planned and are not considered as an advertisement (this is why we stated that "Kindly please take note that the list here is not final and we may add or remove any functionality if we see fit.")

I've also read all the records of your conversation with Mark from 2013, just trying to get the clear picture of your situation. Perhaps we can discuss this further on a more private channel, let's say, via email? My email address is justin [at] stackideas [dot] com. Do drop me an email so that we can further discuss this privately.

Looking forward to hear from you again!

Tango Acquired wrote:

Also Mark,
You need a private message system on your site so that we can avoid unpleasantness like this in the future. It always muffs up the works when non-associated individuals attempt to get in the middle of a conversation that they have no place being in to begin with.

Thank you for your suggestion. I personally agrees with you, though, if we take this thread into context, on Marks 5th response he have requested for you to email him, just so that this issue won't be viewable by other parties.

I'll forward this idea to the site's administrator, they might be able to cook something out of their oven.

Well that answers all of my questions.
NO you will not get anymore viable or useful information out of me.
NO I will not assist you any further with bug reports, testing, or feature suggestion.
NO I will not be spending any money here in the future regardless of how awesome you may one day become.
NO I will not recommend your company to other Site Administrators in the future.
NO I will not play nice from here on out.

I payed for 6 months of support access, and you **** well will give me that access even if I am not using your product. So expect me back here just to muck up the works if you are not going to issue a refund.

Hello,

I do appreciate everyone's response here and as Justin mentioned, we will be unable to issue you a refund because our refund policy clearly states that it has a 30 day money back guarantee and not 60 days money back guarantee. Heck, even Paypal would only allow you to initiate a dispute within 45 days.

As long as you do not breach our licensing policy as outlined and stated here, http://stackideas.com/licensing . There is no point of us preventing you access to the downloads

We have tried to bring this discussion to a more private area, but if you decide to continue the bashings here it's entirely up to you but please, do this with courtesy in mind and please do respect our acceptable policy here, http://stackideas.com/terms

Again, my reply above is clear and if you do need to bring this off public channels, you can do so by sending me an email at mark AT stackideas.com or you can contact justin AT stackideas.com

You should probably lock this thread. It is about to get out of control.

Hi Tango,

Thank you for your response. I'll lock this thread and mark it as solved. Should you have any other inquiries, please do not hesitate to either email mark at mark [at] stackideas [dot] com or you can email me at justin [at] stackideas [dot] com.

Thank you guys!