World's First iPhone Forum Goes Ad-free for Members
As the world's first iPhone forum and community (founded in May 2006, a full eight months before the iPhone was announced), we've seen tremendous growth in our community that now includes over 120,000 members. Since the beginning, our goal was to provide a friendly, knowledgable community for iPhone enthusiasts. We also felt it was necessary to give back. At the end of 2009, we awarded our ‘Genius' level members with free iTunes gift cards. At the end of 2010, we wanted to reward all of our members. While some may not have the 1,000 posts required to reach ‘Genius' level, all members play a integral part in the success of the community. Without you, there is no community. The idea was simple, bring postive change to how you view our community.
We Agree, Ads Suck
Advertisements play a vital role in paying costs associated with running a large and successful site. Put plainly, they are a necessary evil. How do users feel about ads? One member put it best when he said, 'Ads suck'. As sites get popular, costs increase, so it's perfectly understandable why you see ads on sites. There is a disturbing trend on some sites where content has become secondary to ads. Not only are ads instrusive, but they decrease the speed at which a site loads. Never once I've heard from a member that ads have improved his or her experience at one of our forums.
Change
Starting in 2011, we're changing things at every Smart Phone Resource, Inc. forum. This includes our Android forums, Windows Phone forums and webOS forums. If you are a member of our community, you will not see a single ad on our forums.* Not one. No contextual ads. No pop-up ads. No small, unobstrusive banner ad. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Membership is free.
everythingiCafe App Update
So what about the free iPhone app? There was talk of us doing a premium application that would cost $0.99. It would be ad-free, include a stunning new retina display icon along with a wide variety of enhancements to the existing application. We're still doing the premium app, but we're pricing it at $0.00. Yes, it's free and as long as you're a logged in as a member, you won't see ads. All the enhancements, the retina display icon, ad-free and more. All free. If you're not a member, a quick sign up will remove all the iAds for you. You can download the current version 1.2 of the everythingiCafe app now in the AppStore and you'll receive the free update version 1.3 as soon as it's approved. Note: It was submitted for approval on December 22nd, 2010.
We hope you enjoy the new ad-free community at everythingiCafe. Not a member, join today.
* You must be logged in and a registered member. Currently, we don't a way to remove ads for members throughout the site, so you'll still see ads when reading the blog. If you're looking to sell your iPad, get cash for Cheap Axis Powers Hetalia Cosplay , recycle your old iPad, or plain old get rid of your used iPad, everbuying.com is the place to go.