Barry Cooper outside looking in the un official story
Staff Writer
2007-05-16
.bugnews.bloggieblog.com .
Barry Cooper is known as the founder of Blackvoices.com. Blackvoices.com from a historical perspective is a flagship social networking or community based website. Blackvoices.com community focus population is toward those who practice the African American culture and it�s history. Barry Cooper was able to show America how that black people or people of Africa descent had a strong interest in the internet as long as the content was of interest to them.
In 1990�s , the internet was taking off . The internet had left the land of the geeks and move to the land of the technology savvy . A technological savvy person is someone that may not know the details of the technology used but was ready to use it and benefit from it. Barry Cooper by far is not a computer scientist but, he could be consider a technological savvy person. For example, he first started Black voices as link on Orland Sentinel website with the help of American Online. The site did so well that Tribune the parent company gave Cooper 5 million to further his cause.
Well, Blackvoices road high for awhile and, it flew past Netnoir.com up until Netnoir's fall. One would think Cooper would have looked ahead to see what was coming. If someone gives you 5 million dollars, you have to make the return on investment. Although streetroachpics.com is unable to verify Blackvoices profits and losses, it is safe to assume that Tribune did not see anymore shine in Black voices because it was sold to Time Warner American Online. As Blackvoices began to grow, it began to brand itself with magazines and building a good strong customer list through this magazine and other offline publications. Blackvoices took part in its own annual event which encouraged members to take part. The 800,000 mailing address gave Blackvoices value for future bidders.
As Blackvoices was growing, a new kid came on the block. The new kid was Blackplanet. This was the fall of the Empire that Cooper built. Lets look at what blackplanet did to take the sun from Blackvoices.com. Blackplanet.com had some new stuff and, it was very simple to use and communicate with folk but, it still did not have a lot of the good content that Blackvoices had nor the journalism staff. Blackvoices was mostly a messageboard site along with chatting , but Blackplanet allowed people to talk and remain anonymous through their internal messaging system and allow pictures along with webpages. The last kicker was Oprah. Yes , the real Queen of Media.
When Blackplanet �Director� not owner Omar �mouth piece� went on Oprah, this killed Blackvoices. Every kid, mom , pop and joe that fit the technology savvy profile got on Blackplanet and ran. What came next you asked? Hotlinking came.
Hotlinking is a simple term . Hotlinking is when you take the url from one site and post it so other can click it and goto the other site. Well , all the the people who joined Blackplanet began to go hotlink crazy. For example, http://www.blackplanet.com/useid is a good example. Blackplanet made it easy for you to further their cause. Once hotlinking got popular, all the smaller sites started to do it too.
One has to ask , did Cooper have a fight plan to keep the dogs off. With the content alone and a good marketing stagey, Blackvoices could have crushed Blackplanet. Yet , only Cooper, staff and tribune knows the answer to that question. One lesson learned is new sites will pop up and the technological savvy types will jump ship fast if you do not have something they need or want. Blackvoices is still new but yet Old and time will tell the direction it will take.