Have you ever merged another community with yours?

My forum has been online since 2011, but I haven't merged it with any forums. Prior to 2011, we merged with two different forums and then when I got locked up, we lost it all as I was in the process of moving the site to another server and I didn't have the time to make a backup as the cops showed up to my house because I had a warrant.

But anyways, have you ever merged another community with yours? How did that work out for you? On the plus side, I'd love to find a forum and merge it onto mine one day because I'd love to see my forum have 500k posts or 1 million one day.

 

I never have. I never wanted to deal with the problems that come from two different forums with two different sets of rules and two different ways of doing things and everything else that goes with merging. Not to mention I have zero interest in adding staff from another forum. None.

 

What if you didn't have to keep their staff members and the members were well aware that the rules would be different on your community?

 

I had an offer to buy another DJ board out - guess the owner just got tired of it. I wound up not doing it because the climate of both forums was vastly different. His board is more professional mines more talk about anything. It would've been a culture shock to both sides and I didn't need the headaches.

 

I've never been afforded such an opportunity. The only mergers I've ever been offered were mergers, not acquisitions.

 

Twice this year I've done this...

Since i run a fan forum for various YA book series, I reached out to an author I liked back in March to see if he'd like to include his series "Storm Front" and "Tempest Fore" as my site's flagship book(basically flagship is the one i mainly put the most effort in advertising for). His old former was inactive/dead so he decided to take me up on my offer.

3 weeks later...dude decided he wanted to break the merge because he wanted to be "Top dawg" instead of a 32 year old man equal to a 17 year old admin(me). He had the audacity to tell me that if I wanted to I could move my site to his new Mybb board he was making...this way HE would be the head honcho and I'd be merging with him.


^I'm over it for the most part but i am definitely not as big of a fan of his works as I was because his Ego wouldn't allow him to be equal to someone half his age.

Back in August 2013, I tried to do another merge with my friend, Peter for his RP site..it bombed after a month or so because his members needed me to more or less tell them everything to do. They wanted an admin who is going to hold their hand, check up on them and give them assignments of what to do...That is not me. I am a very independent person and I don't have time to play babysitter to people who should be able to read specific threads to find out what needs to be done.

I shouldn't need to tell you "Hey, these threads with the word "STICKY" or "Important" by them are Important threads you should read." It should be common sense.

Anyway since I refuse to more or less baby them up and be a dictator he decided to break the merge and return back to his own forum which from what i understand is not doing too well.

I think i am tapped out for awhile with mergers

 

That's still good though. I haven't been contacted by any of my competitors to merge. We only have one competitor, but they barely have any users online at any given moment compared to us. We usually have 10-40 members on during the day and night.