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Playground Duel: The Wrap-Up
Last week at this time, as you all may remember, Offsprung was in something between a tizzy and a tantrum. Babble.com, what passes for our competition in this tiny world of “alternative” online parenting publications, had started a community called “Babble Playground.” Our own “Playground” had been active for almost a year by this time, and we felt usurped, if not completely ripped off. Much discussion ensued, and then some loyal Offsprungians, on their own volition, went to sign up for this other Playground, starting a discussion group called “People Who Like Offsprung.com.”
If we meant to get Babble’s attention, then their attention was procured. A few days later, I received an email from Rufus Griscom, founder and CEO of Nerve Media, Babble’s parent company. Rufus and I have met in person once, maybe twice, and I’ve been writing for his online magazines for years, so his tone was somewhere between friendly and condescending.
“We had no idea that you had social networking functionality on your site,” he wrote. “I haven’t been there in some time. Any appearance of overlap is a case of great minds thinking alike.”
I might dispute bestowing the title of “great minds” on the guy who wrote a song called “I Wipe My Ass Upon Your Novel” (me) and the guy who started an online sex magazine for neurotics (him). Still, I can accept that, possibly, this might have been a coincidence. Certainly, no one has cornered the important “Facebook For Parents” market yet, and there are only so many bells and so many whistles that one can place on such a venture. But I find it strange that Babble didn’t realize that our internet community, which eerily resembles theirs, was named the exact same thing, or that they didn’t bother to check.
We did check, with our trusty legal counsel, and we found that Babble has done nothing illegal. There has been no infringement, trademark- or other-wise. Thus, our dual Playgrounds will play on alongside each other.
But not, apparently, with the same families invited.
Griscom’s email went on to say, before wishing my family a “balmy spring,”: “We are going to take the thread down because it’s inaccurate and kinda tacky, I think, to have your site promoted this way, whether or not this is coming from your people.”
While what our Offsprungians did wasn’t necessarily rational, they kept it clean and innocent, and their chatter died completely after 24 hours when they returned to their actual community. Is that “kinda tacky”, or is it kinda tackier to censor your parenting community before it even starts, especially when the there are only two other groups on your site and the one for “Tribeca parents” is invitation-only?
No matter how annoying Offsprung’s community can get, and it can get pretty annoying sometimes, we never delete a post, or a thought, or a sentiment, and if someone wants to come on our site to try to promote theirs, well, they can wade through the thicket like the rest of us. No one is excluded, and everyone is welcomed. I don’t think Babble’s nascent “Playground” can make the same claim.
We’ve had disputes with our competition in the past. But Babble is still a high-quality publication, totally deserving of its National Magazine Award nomination. They’ve published writers who we respect enormously, as friends and colleagues, including Ayun Halladay, Rebecca Woolf, Arthur Bradford, Trey Ellis, and many more. They’ve pushed certain unspoken truths about parenting into the foreground of conversation, and they’ve done so with wit and style.
But as far as “community” goes, Babble is an expensive downtown urban loft rehab, where everything looks pretty, but it all feels so perfect, so smooth, so sterile, so target-marketed, so…fake. Offsprung, on the other hand, is like going over to the house of a good friend, a friend who has three kids and can’t afford to even dream about a nanny. The house is imperfect. It’s loud. There’s a weird yellow stain with hair clumps behind the toilet. But it’s home, and it’s comfortable, and it’s yours.
We’ve been doing Offsprung for two years now, one year of preparation, and one year live, and when I say “us”, I mean dozens of people who’ve worked long hours for no pay because we believe in this site and we believe in the values for which it stands. Of course this is a commercial venture. We have ads, and someday we hope to make enough off those ads, or from other sources, so we can stop this from being a completely volunteer effort. Babble, for all its efficiency and high-quality writing, can’t make the same claim. It’s been target-marketed and product-researched to the hilt, and it shows. The people in the two communities are basically the same–good, hard-working parents who want to do right by their kids but also hang on to a shred of their pre-parenthood identities. It all depends on who they want as their landlord.
But enough bashing on the competition. I wish them luck in their sterile loft community and hope that no more “kinda tacky” people darken their doorstep. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to barely pay the mortgage over here, and hopefully watch our family grow and grow. I hope you all stay around as well.
Love,
The mgmt.
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I find myself spending more and more time here versus other "on-line communities" of which I am a part. I know it can be frustrating at times to see the slow pace of its growth, but I've noticed more and more new faces here over the past several months and I believe a critical mass is developing.
Love,
The Kinda Tacky Mommagrrl