FREEHOLD, N.J. - In response to clients' requests for a webmaster board that focuses more on industry dealings, Too Much Media has launched NoTrolls, a networking community the company calls the "adult industry board for business."
"We have been tossing around the idea of a business board for a while now," Too Much Media co-founder and co-owner John Albright told AVN Online. "As the situation got worse and worse on other boards — and with Internext [Summer] right around the corner — we decided that the time was finally right to open it up.
"We were asked fairly often by our clients to provide a place for them to interact with each other," he continued. "The solution we've put in place is great because it allows them to do that in private, as well as interact with non-Too Much Media clients in a business manner."
According to the company, NoTrolls also gives Too Much Media's clients an "exclusive, clients-only area" for conducting business privately and sharing knowledge with each other.
The site is a response to a growing concern among some webmasters that professional networking was taking a backseat to bashing, as well as "spamming, flooding, flaming, 'see sig' posts, and 'post count' posts," Albright said, adding that NoTrolls offers a decidedly different atmosphere. "'No trolls' says it all, because one of the largest problems with today's adult message boards is [anonymous posters who flame, bash, and verbally assault] other posters and distract threads from their intended topic."
NoTrolls requires all members to provide information about their company, position, and identity to guarantee there are no anonymous posters. The board also requires standardized signatures, according to the company.
"By having standardized signatures, the focus will be on the content of each post and not who has the flashiest signature with 15 dancing monkeys or billboard-sized, neon pink and green flashing signs with eight lines of huge text in every color of the rainbow," Albright said.
In addition, NoTrolls will reserve the right to remove posts it finds offensive or that violate any of its no-flooding/-spamming rules. Board members who consistently break the rules are subject to banning, the company stated.
The site also will offer private content to Too Much Media clients, who will receive access to select boards for conducting business, Albright said. A forum for third-party clients also will be available.
To celebrate the launch, NoTrolls is offering a special promotion in which new members are eligible to receive prizes for making specific post numbers, such as 500th, 2,500th, 10,000th, etc. Prizes range from cash amounts to an iPod, iPhone, or plasma TV.
NoTrolls hopefully will provide an alternative to webmaster communities that don't put as much value into networking and finding new avenues for revenue, Albright said.
"I think some boards may clean up their act a bit while others won't," he said. "This industry does seem to have a liking for drama and peering into other people's business. There will certainly always be a market for providing that; it just isn't what we're looking to cater to."
