24.10.04
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25.10.04
BikeReader Announces New Forum:
World Continues to Turn on Axis
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In a development which has stunned both bicycle industry experts and planetologists, the producers of bikereader.com have just announced that the launch of freewheelingforum.com has had no measurable effect on the steady movement of the planet Earth. However, staff members continue to hold out hope that other heavenly bodies may have ceased spinning, or at the very least paused to consider the shaky new enterprise.

"They have correspondents with reeeeeally big telescopes down in Australia who have told them with great confidence that Pluto wobbled, and Saturn definitely lost a ring," claims a BikeReader insider.

The forum sports a new domain name out of respect for BikeReader's audience, who know that BR is a noncommercial site. The Freewheeling CEO explains: "We have big plans for the new forum. It doesn't have any revenue at the moment, but we hope to make up for it in volume." He added, "I've put a new titanium bike on order as a small gift to myself when the money starts rolling in."

Asked if he was worried about competition from such other forums as Cycling Plus, Bike Magic, and Babes On Bikes, he commented: "Of course not. The fact that they already have thousands if not millions of members and an established community simply means that we have room for growth. I'm especially pleased with the current pristine state of our forum; it's aesthetically very distinctive."

25.10.04
Webmaster Feels the Heat
Disassociated Press
Internet impresario Sam Walker was feeling the heat today for his latest venture freewheelingforum.com, an offshoot of the long-running but negative-profit bikereader.com. Walker's calm facade cracked only hours after his production company issued an essentially optimistic press release [see above].

"It's early minutes yet, but investors are getting antsy," Walker admitted. "You know how venture capitalists operate. They'd sell their mothers short in a hot second if there was the promise of a decent return in it. How do you think they're going to treat me if I don't come up with the goods? And I can't even bake cookies as a fallback."

Walker's woes were compounded by modest membership registrations and postcounts. As a joke, one of his competitors emailed him an animated .gif of rolling tumbleweeds. "That one had the office in stitches," Walker commented drily.

Launching a new forum in an already crowded market is never easy, according to web expert Delroy Dilbert, of Delroy Dilbert Delroy Ltd. "I've seen 'em come and I've seen 'em go. The only true path to success is success. Unfortunately most people don't draw on that basic knowledge. They aren't even aware that success has two c's and two s's."

Dilbert chuckled grimly: "For nine out of ten startups it's all downhill from the beginning. The only question is how steep."

26.10.04
Webmaster 'Hopeful'
Disassociated Press
After a tumultuous launch which was "like a rollercoaster from heaven to hell and back, finally stopping in Reading, emotionally," Freewheeling CEO Sam Walker greeted day two calmly "hopeful, yet essentially pessimistic" that his new forum would live to see a brighter future.

"Registrations are up; we managed to snare some big game fairly early on," said the careworn executive, almost lost among the detritus of the grand opening party held at the Freewheeling offices in East Sussex yesterday.

"We had to make the cleaning lady redundant sometime after midnight," he sheepishly explained. Although a flurry of evening activity on the boards rallied support among twitchy investors,"they strongly hinted that the extravagances would have to go. I may even have to sell the Bike Friday."

Helmets saved the day
The highest traffic was enjoyed by the fledgling 'Helmets' child board, found under the wing of 'Cycling 101'. "I got the idea for a dedicated helmets board from my 2-year-old daughter," maintained Walker, not actually a parent except for the purposes of this article. "One day she looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said 'Da-da, hemm sh lrrrrp aaaaaaah frenzle if you build it they will come urp gllxxxxx fra'. It was surely a sign."

Asked what she thought of her da-da's new enterprise, the tot commented "I don't know how far he's going to get pedalling his forum on Usenet. There are some brilliant people I know he's quite keen to have register in addition to those who've already done so, but whether they'll wish to take part in this type of format is anyone's guess. Urp."

His daughter's precocious critique prompted Walker to comment: "Indeed. Anybody's guess. Coochy-coo. The nice thing about 'this format' is its potential not just as a cohesive community, but as an easily-searchable database of information and opinion. Sure, you can pick through Usenet via google groups, but it's not the same."

He's also tiredly keen to point out to potential recruits that Freewheeling offers many other boards in addition to helmets. "I think you'll find most tastes catered for," he promised. "And I'm open to suggestion. '[Rant]....[/Rant]' is a direct result of member influence; in fact I'm considering posting there myself. 'Fixed' was another suggestion I adopted, though the last time I tried to ride one of those I almost ended up in hospital."

With that, Walker slumped back in his ergonomically unsound chair, knocked unconscious by weeks of long months, his troubled slumber occasionally punctuated by gurglings from his progeny.

27.10.04
Freewheeling May be Running
Stealth Campaign to Attract Members
Disassociated Press
Freewheeling's Sam Walker was accused today of running what amounts to an uberstealth campaign to attract members from Future Publishing behemoth Cycling Plus, which has been operating a successful forum for several years. Sources tell us that Walker recently registered on his competitor's forum as 'rice dream', an impossibly obscure reference which experts say will fly right past the overwhelming majority of everyone who casts an eye over the 'active users' box.

Walker, a former contributor to C+, appeared nonplussed when asked to comment on the allegations: "That wasn't me," he insisted. "I haven't visited their boards for months. In any case, it's impossible to trace a yahoo.com email account."

Some C+ regulars are suspicious. One opined "That's just the sort of thing 'Sam' - if that's what he's calling himself these days - would do." The source referred to Walker's perplexing name change last year, oddly enough the subject of a May 2003 'Deeply Unfashionable' column entitled What's in a Name. In it the writer used poet Marianne Moore, NYPD Blue, the Edsel automobile, and even oral sex as ammunition in a losing bid to explain the rationale for the ID swap. Tens of thousands of readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest.

Carlton Reid, publisher of the eerily omniscient industry trade journal Bicycle Business, has suggested: "It's safe to assume that particular column was the reason for the abrupt decline in C+ circulation figures. No wonder they sacked him."

"I suppose one can just barely see what he's attempting to do here," said another C+ forum member. "In an idle moment I often cast a glance down to that section to see who else is around. 'Rice Dream' is not a particularly unusual handle compared to others I've seen, but it did set bells to ringing, and that night it hit me like a tonne of bricks in the middle of what had been a particularly satisfying session of lovemaking. You have to dig into the archives to know what it's all about, but back when he was scaring up hosts for his Hospitality Tour story which eventually ran in the magazine, it became well known among those who cared that the guy was addicted to the white stuff. After that moment of stunning realization, I continued with my efforts and reached a not unsatisfying climax."

Cycling Plus editor Tony Farrelly could not be reached for comment, but an anonymous staffer suggested that Walker's antics, if proven, were nothing to be alarmed about. "We've got over 10,000 members; he's still struggling to make it past the critical three dozen bar. Talk to us in a few years and maybe we'll show a modicum of concern."

27.10.04
Freewheeling Cuts Usenet
Membership Drive Short
Disassociated Press
Citing a "strong desire to spend more time with my loving family and friends," Freewheeling CEO Sam Walker announced today the abrupt termination of a short-running campaign on Usenet to attract new members. The decision came after the initiative attracted some strong criticism from regulars at the newsgroup uk.rec.cycling.

"We feel we've accomplished our goal of attracting attention while at the same time creating a valuable database of, for want of a better word, Orcs." Walker didn't elaborate on the apparent LOtR reference, though insiders speculate he might have meant Urcs.

It is an axiom of the business that any PR is good PR, and in Walker's opinion his campaign achieved its goals while staying within the boundaries of Usenet etiquette: "We lovingly crafted one or at most two posts per day over a timespan of less than a week. By any reasonable definition that does not constitute SPAM. In any event we are uncertain when precisely it was that satire became such a bête-noir on newsgroups.

"Of course, our crucial mistake was in assuming that our nonprofit parent company BikeReader.com had established a reservoir of goodwill due to the efforts of its webmaster [also Walker] to archive a vast literature on the subject for the pleasure and convenience of web-literate cyclists. We wrongly felt this would buy us some leeway in terms of the admittedly blatant promotion of Freewheeling."

Nevertheless, Walker feels that the genius of the campaign was its saturation bombing effect: "By referencing the forum in other posts in addition to the faux news announcements, we made our quarry feel there was no escape. This method, reportedly first used by Saatchi & Saatchi in the first Labour campaign, had the not uncoincidental side benefit of making membership on the Freewheeling site self-selecting: anybody who liked the ads is here, or will be shortly. Anybody who loathed them will stay away. Thus our demographic is refined considerably." The forum administrator seemed delighted to have "reached critical mass in a surprisingly short time; it would've made Fermi proud."

Asked if he had any regrets, Walker only smiled. "Not a one. We made it out by the skin of our teeth. It's a wonderful feeling to never have to do that again."