Turning Points in Web Hosting - Web Hosting Talk Holds Hosting Sway

By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com

This story appeared in "Ten Turning Points," featured in the September 2004 issue of  Web Host Industry Review magazine. Click here to subscribe for free.

October 26, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web sites are so closely tied to the business of Web hosting that to even point out the connection seems silly. Web sites, after all, are the reason Web hosting exists at all.

Web sites, after all, are the reason Web hosting exists at all. So it's really no surprise that one Web site, in particular, is considered by many to be one of the most significant influences on the industry.

It may be more surprising, however, that the influential Web site is not a news site or a reseller resource, but a community forum. It's difficult to imagine another industry as powerfully and fundamentally influenced by an Internet discussion forum as the Web hosting industry is influenced by Web Hosting Talk .

The focal point of the Web hosting community, Web Hosting Talk draws participation from a diverse range of users that includes the CEOs of large hosting organizations, to ISP tech support employees, all the way to small Web hosting customers. Since its inception in March of 2000, Web Hosting Talk, now a property of iNET Interactive, has taken a magnifying glass to Web hosting firms of all sizes producing a real transparency to hosting operations.

The industry's first, and largest, bulletin board, Web Hosting Talk is not only the most popular Web site about Web hosting, generating more than 5 million page views a month, but is one of the most popular sites on the Internet in general. It ranks number 948 on Alexa's list of most popular Web sites. At last count, the site featured 2.3 million posts on over 300,000 topics from more than 77,000 active members.

Discussion on Web Hosting Talk encompasses an endless variety of topics, offering a broad representation of Web hosting community thought. Prospective customers ask questions about the service providers they are considering. Small Web hosts and large providers discuss matters of strategy and policy. Resellers and customers relate their experiences, good and bad. And the community in general discusses news and issues, service outages and other trends.

While not a news service by design, Web Hosting Talk has, on occasion, seen big news about the Web hosting business break within its threads, and industry rumors are always quick to hit the site.  Founded by Matthew Freeman of UK-based Host Investigator, the site was eventually sold, in April of 2002, to Robert Marsh and EV1 Servers, known at the time as RackShack.net.

According to the site's current owner, Gabriel Murphy of new media content management agency iNET Interactive, the growth of the community is largely attributable to the conscientious work of the forum's original lead moderator, known to Web Hosting Talk members as Chicken, and of the various other moderators who succeeded him. Driven most of all by the input of the members themselves, the quality and validity of forum posts continued, despite changes in moderation.

In late 2001, iNET Interactive expressed interest in acquiring Web Hosting Talk from Marsh and EV1Servers. Murphy says he saw potential in a number of sites, most notably Web Hosting Talk and HotScripts, that could be more profitable if directed under a single umbrella company. In September 2002, after nearly a year of negotiation talks with Marsh, iNET Interactive acquired the site, adding Web Hosting Talk to its growing portfolio of Webhosting, Web development, and computer hardware sites.

Revenues aside, the site has a value that goes well beyond money. Murphy affirms that iNET's main reason for acquiring Web Hosting Talk was the chance to provide an invaluable resource for the Web hosting community—a word-of-mouth force so influential its value as a phenomenon would be impossible to measure. "If it were in the hands of a larger Web hosting firm that wanted to leverage that influence," he says, "it could be worth a significant amount."

Since acquiring Web Hosting Talk, iNET has done little to change the site. Murphy's reasoning is that the community's development was always led by its users, and most people are sensitive to change. Instead, he affirms that iNET has "done a good job remaining in the background", without interfering with the site's sole objective: to inform and create an awareness of industry issues, keeping smaller and larger hosting firms honest and accountable. "And if they try to cut corners and deceive people," he says, "it's well publicized."

Murphy agrees that Web Hosting Talk is among the most powerful influences in the Web hosting business's history. The word-of-mouth significance is a hard one to argue. Just about anyone affiliated with Web hosting today has, at one time or another, either read, written or replied to a Web Hosting Talk post. While the content of other Web hosting sites may come from a central editorial team, the issues and topics discussed on Web Hosting Talk are completely derived from the industry's key participants themselves.

"We are the biggest opinion newspaper for the Web hosting community," says Murphy.