It’s been a month since I’ve found it necessary to do sit-down Sunday, and mostly it’s not because there weren’t any big issues, but mostly because I haven’t been on my game. Nevertheless it’s time to put the running shoes on and get back in the race, so hit the grown running I shall.
I’ve been a member of the Zune community since the very beginning. I’ve seen websites come and go. Well mostly come and then fizzle out like light bulbs on a Christmas tree when you’ve overloaded the circuit breaker. Indeed during Zune 2 and 3 there weren’t just sites sprouting up, there were literally sites splintering to form new sites, from old sites, that were in fact themselves part of a older site. When I decided to start giving back to the community the first thing I did wasn’t buy a domain. The first thing I did was go to my favorite Zune related website and ask if I could contribute in some way. I was turned down, flatly. Then I went and created ZuneSpring and the rest as they say, is in the history books. It’s been a crazy ride, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. (Well not anything. Maybe some thick woolen socks. You can never have too many of those.)
Now as I look back on the defining moments in my short web related career I’m reminded of the opportunities I never got, the respect people never gave me when I asked them to help. True it’s that attitude that eventually pushed me to create this website, and no doubt many of the Zune websites that have come and gone. I was once asked what I didn’t like about the Zune community, by a former staff member and I remember replying to him with something like “No one wants help. It’s not really a community. It’s a growing number of people fighting for the same pool of people”. Looking back on that, it might have very well been the most brilliant thing I’ve ever remembered saying.
Some will tell you that it’s the newer site’s fault. That for some reason everyone keeps trying to create their own sites but bomb. That if everyone would just stop creating their own Zune sites and visit the ones that are already established, we wouldn’t have this problem. While I applaud this statement it’s only half true. There may be too many chefs in the kitchen, but maybe that’s only because the chef doesn’t want anyone else in. At this point the community has been reduced that half-baked sites who have only half of the resources you might need or Spammy, search engine hungry websites hell bent on making a quick buck, but not contributing anything in the form of actual Zune editorials, and how to’s. We’re held together loosely by Twitter messages, and people who do all they can reach us with little or no results.
I do not exempt myself from these statements. ZuneSpring has in some way contributed to this issue. However what was I to do? Not offer anyone any help? Not set out on my own when everyone insisted they would be fine by themselves? I say let’s band together and kick some proverbial ass. Let’s put out quality Zune information, in one common, place, and back each other up. The community doesn’t need us fighting over tiny morsels of Zune news that trickle out over the year. They need a strong site that can’t help them with what they need and answer the questions that they may have. This doesn’t have to be ZuneSpring, and if there are any other webmasters who would like to join forces email me at theteam@zunespring.com. I can attempt to do this alone, or we can do it together.