I see many many vb users in the licensed areas of Invision Power, myself included.
It appears we will make the switch to IP.Board 3.1 when it comes out also. Our forum is incompatible with the business model Internet Brands is using.
Internet Brands has a fasinating history starting out as CarsDirect.com, and I invite anyone with interest to take 10 minutes to google ‘cars direct.com wiki’ and read what comes up. I found Roger Penske’s involvement, especially when he left the board of directors particularly fascinating.
From what I can tell they are not interested in what the vb customer wants/needs at all – “they” being top management, not the support staff. Clearly there are people in the company that are passionate about vb and the customers well being.
From my perspective, IB revenue from vb is dwarfed from other income they receive, although I’ve not seen any hard numbers of Autodata vs vb for the licensing revenue. I do wonder however if the companies that pay to advertise on IB forums know where their ads are showing up, at least at one point they were being shown on a motorcycle forum which was 98% spam from Nike shoes, womans purses, and viagra ads.
The only remaining question which I continue to ask myself: Is IB purposly driving customers away so their network of sites are some of the few remaining using vb (and by that time it will be a superior product)? Or do they simply not care.
And my only remaining concern is: what will happen to the vb support staff after progressively fewer sites are using vb, and with the reduced revenue vb brings in. IB is a business. Hopefully they will be offered new positions in other parts of the company.