Bill has some good ideas and is well on the way to implementing them. And Sean has raised some valid questions, too (the law of averages at work here)..

Leveraging social media may make sense but as a digital business consultant myself (albeit a hopelessly elderly and senile one), one of my first questions for a client who's dead set on using social media ("We must have social media; the CEO wants it") is: what do you want to accomplish? If the set of potential buyers is very small and they predictably all consult the same few sites to see the same very small number of "for sale" glider ads, how can we add value through social media, value that can't be added in other ways. Otherwise, we risk the old "it's a solution looking for a problem" scenario.

A simple Facebook feed is messy; e.g., GliderSource's Facebook ads are interspersed with news items in chronological (not category) order because they're posted to a timeline. It's easy to find the most recent ads (also on GliderSource.com itself) but not so easy to find a specific type of glider. Plus it appears there's no expire function: 6 of the first 10 ads I clicked displayed "Sorry, The ad you are looking for (item name) is no longer available," forcing me to close the new window in each case and go back to browsing. Not all bad (though nicer than Bill's new competitor Sean's Facebook page) but still probably not going to "destroy" every other soaring want ad site in a year, much less a week.

I'd also venture to say that most pilots looking for a used glider don't even know what an RSS feed is, for example, though I think it's great that Bill (sorry for picking on him--I like most things about his site) offers a lot of choices for communicating information to potential buyers. If I were in the market for a new/used glider--which I have been, on average, every 15-20 years, I'd definitely go to the GliderSource site to look. That's because I suspect there are some gliders there that aren't on the Wings & Wheels site. We know there's one (Bob's Genesis) although, interestingly, it's also on Soaring Cafe's site. So if that's true across the board, why would I need to go to both of those sites? Hmmm.

On the other hand, I'd HAVE to go to Wings & Wheels because that site has ads that don't appear elsewhere. Ironically, Tim has done the rest of his competitors a huge favor: i.e., their sites (or at least some of them) will be visited by interested buyers because there is no single site that holds every listing. Because of this, some of these guys are smart enough to shut up and not try to shame or browbeat Tim into changing his alleged policy.

If I were selling a glider--which I do about as often as I buy one--I would probably just put it up on Tim's site, for the same reason: it's the one site I know people will visit because it has "original content"; i.e., stuff they won't find anywhere else.

Would I regret or resent that Tim might not allow me to post my ad elsewhere? [he has never responded to this thread so we don't really know what his policy is] Maybe. Having more placements out there is better for the seller.. But would I try to harangue him into allowing me to do something he didn't permit on his free site and lecture him about how much better it would be for the soaring community and how it's rude and stupid to do otherwise? I used to try this with my parents. They didn't hang up on me but I suspect they wanted to once or twice.

Sorry guys, but since we weren't on the phone call between Tim and Bob, we don't really know what went down and who, if anyone, was "rude" to whom.

At least Tim doesn't condescend to us, telling us how we're so hopelessly backward that we can't possibly understand the brilliance of his ideas (or refute them). Actually, soaring comprises a great bunch of people. I can't imagine anyone doing that. Certainly I can't imagine anyone on this forum responding to valid criticism with "kiss my ass".

Well, maybe one or two.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.