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Old 04-25-2014, 08:40 AM   #47
Jeffrey S
Scraping Paint
 
City: Full-time onboard
Vessel Model: Trawler
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 929
Quote:
Originally Posted by rwidman View Post
I'm fine with Active Captain. It's Jeff Siegel that I'm not so sure about.
To really know me is to love me. Give it time...

Quote:
Originally Posted by rwidman View Post
You bash magazines because they accept advertising. How is your business supported? How is the term "sponsor" different from the term "advertiser"? As I posted above when checking a marina on Active Captain, I often see a suggestion to try a nearby Active Captain sponsor instead. How is that honest? How is that different from advertising?
Sigh...back to ActiveCaptain.

Yeah, we're a for-profit business. Marinas pay us money and we highlight the ones that do because they allow you to use ActiveCaptain for free and we think you should know who's paying for your use.

The big difference is that no sponsor marina has ever had a negative review removed or anything altered to give a biased view about the facility. Sponsors get no special treatment - they're just allowed to present their information to readers in ways that highlight their status. We also allow them to highlight unusually high discounts that we also have to approve before they are published.

In addition, we're odd in that we don't allow any marina to just pay us to become a sponsor. They have to meet certain quality conditions or be on a demonstrated plan of significant improvement (which we've only allowed twice - both marinas are 5 star ones today). We turn down marinas every week who want to pay us money. Do you think a magazine has ever turned down an ad for any product? How about a guidebook?

If we operated like magazines operated, we'd delete negative statements or only publish the positive ones (like other websites who try to copy us do but miss the whole zen of the internet in the name of "editing").

So if you have no problem with ActiveCaptain, why do you keep using it as an example for my personal beliefs about magazines? ActiveCaptain exists in its form because I felt magazines and guidebooks had the wrong model and weren't providing a valid service to me, a boater. It shouldn't be a surprise that ActiveCaptain's model is significantly different.

And again, this is exactly why there are no other marine company executives, engineers, or others with real industry knowledge on places like this. Why can't the discussion happen without an attempt to slander the products I represent? Why can't the discussion center around the ideas instead?
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