| WHO |
Well that would be me, me would be "LizardMan", "PapaFeesch", "the ListMaster" or just plain old "Jason". There's a couple of guys who run the Feesch Chatroom, there's about a dozen volunteers called Deputies who help me by checking all the content that gets submitted by members, but apart from that it's just me. I do the design (no sniggering please), the database, the scripts, the servers, the sales, the marketing, even the newsletter. If you have a problem, it will be me you talk to and me that (hopefully) fixes the problem for you. You may think I'm going over the top here, but I feel it's important to realise that you are not dealing with a large corporation but an individual, which for the most part I hope you view as a good thing.
|
| WHAT |
So what is this site all about? Well it's a community site, for people that use ICQ and live in the UK. It's a way of grouping those people together so that they can find each other easily and interact more effectively. The site has many uses, but perhaps the closest analogy would be a pub. Pub's don't have an exact use, they are just there so people can meet and chat. You might find love, you might not. That is not what the site is about, it's not a dating agency. Neither is it designed for people who just want one night stands, though there is certainly an element of that as well. Feesch should be considered a blank canvas, an all purpose tool that can be used in lots of different ways.
|
| WHEN |
Ah, finally an easy one, May 1998. I was working for a company called Feesch Creative at the time, and that's where the site gets it's name from. I would like to state at this point, that there is no affiliation between this site and any company with that name now. The word "Feesch" is a mis-pronounciation of the word "Fish" and that's that I'm afraid, not very clever at all. Not that keen on it personally, but it kinda stuck and it would be impractical to change it now.
|
| WHY |
Always the most important question of all. I started it because other userlists at the time were found wanting. They were all static pages of HTML that were generally updated once a month, you became listed by e-mailing the listmaster and you were unable to edit or remove your details without e-mailing again, by which time the listmaster had generally stopped maintaining the site. It was also very difficult to find people on one enormous list, there was no option to "search" for new joiners, or people that lived near you, there was nothing like that at all.
And why do I continue to run it? Well not for money, I don't get paid a penny. I run it because I believe I'm doing something worthwhile, people have made friends, formed business partnerships, got married, had kids, all because of this site. In the last couple of years, one or two other similar sites have emerged along the same lines, but I firmly believe that Feesch is still the best by a long way. For me it's not down to the design or even the functionality, it's about "soul" (or possibly "sole" lol). It's about the morality, ethics and general atmosphere.
I'm also not interested in selling the site to anyone else, I just don't believe that anyone else would run it the way I think it should be run, and I wouldn't want it used in ways I don't agree with. I continue to run the site the way I think it should be run, always using my experience as a user to drive developments towards ease of use and functionality, never towards profitability. The funds that the site raises (advertising, GoldFeesch etc) are used to finance the site itself, pay for hosting, new servers etc, not to provide me with a new yacht.
|
|
