In our previous post, we mapped out the vBulletin ecosystem, and did a bit of "value cartography" to see how profit moves in the vBulletin ecosystem.

In this post, we'll look at two of the biggest players in the vBulletin ecosystem that have the potential to -- and, from what it looks like, are aiming to -- disrupt the vBulletin ecosystem.

Zoints: Allocating Attention and Creating Network Effects

Zoints practices an Attention Allocation Application (AAA) strategy; in other words, they create applications that help to allocate attention within the vBulletin ecosystem. Zoints creates and promotes applications that unite vBulletin forum owners. They do this by ensuring their applications help forum owners make their individual forum better -- while also creating network value by uniting the vBulletin communities (and of course, this value is shared with the individual vBulletin communities).

The image below illustrates what Zoints is trying to do.


vBSEO: Proprietary Application Sales & A Development Community

vBSEO's primary source of revenue is through the selling of their encrypted search engine optimization application, which helps webmasters optimize their forum for search engine traffic. This is also an AAA strategy, but is more focused on extracting and allocating attention from the search engine ecosystem -- one that is obviously larger and more lucrative, but more competitive as well. It is, however, a "1.0" strategy; it does not look to create network value, and thus cannot share network value with its members.

What is more "2.0", though, is that vBSEO recently purchased vBHackers.com, a forum for vBulletin admins; this would suggest that they are looking to create a community/network that caters to vBulletin owners, and thus could help create value by more efficiently allocating attention of vBulletin owners, and by creating network effects by uniting vBulletin developers.

The image below attempts to illustrate how the vBulletin ecosystem could be disrupted through such a strategy.


As we noted in our previous post, the entities closest to the customer will be the ones that wield the greatest control over the ecosystem -- and as such will be the ones that will be able to extract the most profits from the ecosystem.

Next time, we'll take a look at what's going to happen to vBulletin in the future as members of its ecosystem grow and as value continues to shift.

If you're just joining us, this is a case study discussing the vBulletin ecosystem from a web 2.0 perspective. See the start page of this case study for more.