- Yuku
Infobox Website
url = http://www.yuku.com/
commercial = Yes
type = HostedInternet forum s
registration = Required
owner =KickApps Corporation
author = KickApps
launch date = September 2005 (Alpha); September 2006 (Beta); January 2008 (Public)Yuku (which comes from an Australian aboriginal word for "tree") is the latest version of ezboard, Inc.'s internet forums. Yuku describes itself as "Message Boards 2.0". [ [http://www.yuku.com/ Message Boards 2.0 - Yuku ] ] This tagline was most likely derived from the
Web 2.0 features of Yuku message boards, such as tags andRSS .Yuku is now owned by
KickApps , the acquisition being announced onFebruary 13 ,2008 [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/6031/t/A-new-chapter-in-the-Yuku-Story.html A new chapter in the Yuku Story] ] .History
Early demonstrations
Yuku has been in development since 2005 and was revealed as being "available now" at DEMOfall 2005 [ [http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2005fall/55021.php DEMOfall - ezboard, Inc.] ] in September 2005, although it was in Alpha at that time.
At the DEMOfall launch, ezboard, Inc.'s CEO Robert Labatt's presentation explained that advertising revenues would be shared with the individual board owners. Labatt estimated that "an average large community" could receive $3,000 to $5,000 (speculated) a month. The launch was reported by media outlets such as Computerworld, USA Today, Bloomberg and CNN Money.
More demos were given at the New York City Blogon 2005 event [ [http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005/exhibitors/ BlogOn 2005 - The Business of Social Media] ] where it was selected as a "BlogOn 2005 Social Media Innovator". Another demonstration was more recently given in November 2006 at a monthly technology networking event in San Francisco: SFWIN 1.10. Instead of the revenue feature mentioned at DEMOfall 2005, only the integral approach of combining message boards and blogs with multiple profiles per person were highlighted.
Exiting beta
Yuku has been alpha/beta software since 2005. On
January 9 ,2008 , Yuku announced that they would soon be coming out of beta [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/4831 Is this For Real? (Yuku PM)] ] . The "beta" text below the Yuku logo was removed in early2008 . OnMay 16 ,2008 , a member of Yuku staff confirmed that "yuku is no longer in beta", [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/4326] ] although this was in reply to a member's question and not a formal announcement.Pricing
As with
ezboard , free Yuku boards are supported throughadvertisement s. An ad-free board costs $6/month for up to 50,000 page views per month. Communities that generate more than 50,000 views in a month are instead charged $0.20 per 1,000 page views for which they choose ad removal. [http://www.yuku.com/home/goldpricing/ Pricing Details - Gold Ad-Free Community] ]Features
Some of the key features of Yuku are listed below. A detailed ezboard-yuku feature comparison list [ [http://gethelp.yuku.com/topic/1805 ezboard-yuku feature comparison list - FAQs and tutorials - get help! - get help - Message Board - Yuku ] ] is also available.
Profiles, message boards and blogs
Yuku's user profiles are interactive and similar to those at other
Social Networking web sites. Friends can be added or removed, comments can be posted, and private messages exchanged between users. Each account offers the possibility of having five profiles.Profiles, message boards and blogs can be personalized via pre-made themes in the skins library, or custom-built using
HTML and CSS. The "Mini Profile" provides basic user information, e.g. name, location, age etc. The rest of the profile comprises blocks that can be turned on, moved up and down, or removed.The available blocks include a location block, which displays the location of the user's ISP using
Google Maps ; favorite links; media; blog; tags; friends; recent posts; comments; and empty blocks, which can be customised using HTML.Image hosting
Each user gets 30MB of free image hosting, with 100MB of image hosting available for paid accounts. The profiles offer members image galleries with slideshows.
Domains
A board owner can point a domain name to Yuku by changing their nameservers. This means that the board location will be "www.boardname.com" rather than "boardname.yuku.com".
Kudos
Kudos forms the basis of a simplereputation system . User-based kudos is accumulated across Yuku - it is not specific to individual boards. Topic-based kudos allows users to give positive ratings to good topics. This also gives a small fraction of kudos to the user who started the topic.The amount of kudos that a user starts with has changed at least once since the feature was initially introduced. This means that some users may have more kudos than others simply because of their join date. It has not been stated whether there is a plan to "level the playing field". [ [http://support.yuku.com/topic/2867 Kudos: 101 vs. 1 - Lobby: newcomers, introductions, general chat - Welcome - yuku support - Message Board - Yuku ] ]
Message board owners can choose not to display post kudos in their forums (on by default) by a setting in their administration control panel. Members may also hide their kudos level from their profiles by editing the CSS code in their profile skin. [ [http://skins.yuku.com/forums/56 profile customising/skinning FAQs and tutorials] ] Their kudos can still be viewed in the Hall of Fame (see below) or by visiting their kudos page, accessed via the
URL {username}.u.yuku.com/vote/kudos/t/View-this-user-s-Kudos.htmlThe Yuku Hall of Fame [ [http://yuku-team.u.yuku.com/vote/top/t/The-Top-Profiles.html The Yuku Hall of Fame - Top Profiles ] ] shows the top 100 profiles on Yuku, ordered by Kudos.
Tags
Tags are search terms that can be added to topics. Tags make it easier to find topics on certain subjects if the tag words are used wisely. They are an alternate way to search for information, as they will only show topics if the word you are looking for was used as a tag.
You can show the tag box at the top of the forum, but it will not show up until there are 6 different tags in use in the forum. [ [http://help.yuku.com/help20/index.php/Tags Tags] ]
Feature Voting
The Feature Voter [ [http://support.yuku.com/feedback/viewitems/ Login to Yuku: - Yuku ] ] allows users to vote on which features will be developed in the future. Photobucket integration is an example of a feature that was developed ahead of other features based on user feedback.
Accessibility for disabled
The Yuku software makes it possible for people with vision problems to make the text more easy to read by e.g. using larger and bold fonts.
The users administration centers, the message boards and the profiles are accessible for people using
Speech recognition software.ezboard migrations
On
March 7 ,2006 , ezboard's CEO stated [ [http://www.ezboard.com/component/option,com_mamblog/Itemid,55/task,show/action,user/id,69/ ezboard ] ] that all ezboards would move to Yuku when it is ready and that they anticipated that would be in late 2006.On
August 21 ,2006 , ezboard, Inc. asked for an ezboard message board administrator to volunteer their board to be the first one imported into the Yuku system. [ [http://lobby.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/760 yuku support - Message Board - Yuku ] ]As of
September 1 ,2006 , internal stats show that almost 15,000 members [ [http://developer.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/375 yuku support - Message Board - Yuku ] ] of theezboard community had been voluntarilybeta testing Yuku.The rest of the ezboard communities are currently being migrated to Yuku.
Official Yuku communities
Yuku provides a number of help forums, similar in structure to the ezboard help communities:
* [http://support.yuku.com Yuku Support] , which includes announcements, the lobby (for general chat/help queries), and bug reports;
* [http://gethelp.yuku.com Get Help] , a volunteer-led help forum that is an extension to Yuku Support;
* [http://skins.yuku.com Skins & CSS Help] , for assistance with board and profile customizations;
* [http://promote.yuku.com Promote] , for Yuku board owners to advertise their boards.
*Additionally, the [http://help.yuku.com Yuku Help Wiki] provides FAQs for board admins and users.Technology
Server-side processing is handled via
PHP . On the client-side, Yuku makes heavy use of Ajax. As a result, some features are quick and simple to use, such as reordering forums with drag and drop. Also, some changes happen instantly, such as editing users within Member Management.With JavaScript disabled, Yuku is still functional, but some features are simplified. For example, rather than a
WYSIWYG posting editor, non-javascript users are presented with a simple text area instead. As some menus are hidden using JavaScript, these are displayed in full, which can make some pages look cluttered.References
External links
* [http://www.yuku.com/ Yuku Home Page]
* [http://www.ezboard.com ezboard, Inc. Home Page]
* [http://www.kickapps.com KickApps Corporation Home Page]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
