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Brett Tabke: Building Online Communities
Brett Tabke still remembers his introduction to computers: it was during his senior year of high school, in 1979. He studied computer science in college, and after graduating he programmed with several early companies including TwinCities, Berkeley Softworks, Epyx, and more, and developing software for Commodore home computers. The eighties were a good decade for Brett: he wrote a book on programming 6502 machines for Western Design, and was named one of the foremost 6502 programmers in the world. In the 1990's, Brett moved to Iowa to work for a company on BBS and web marketing. BBS stands for "Bulletin Board Systems," and is the precursor to today's forums. Brett had been working on BBS technology since 1984, and saw them evolve into bustling online communities over time. His interest in building online communities led him to learn more about web design and traffic, and he soon became an expert on how to grow a business through online traffic. Today, Brett is the founder and moderator of WebmasterWorld, one of the foremost online forums on Internet marketing, search engine and programming topics around. He met his wife, Erika, on the forum and now lives with her in Austin, Texas. Although search engine optimization is one of Brett's areas of expertise, he made headlines recently when he banned all searchbots from his site to combat the problem of rogue spiders. As a result, he now requires member logins on WebmasterWorld, and the site is no longer listed on search engines. This has, understandably, generated a lot of buzz in the search engine optimization community. Brett claims that while search engines need websites to exist, websites can exist just fine without search engines-and that while today's Internet marketing mainly focuses on buying Adwords and investing in pay-per-click, he feels that more traditional methods of marketing are just as effective. Other search experts point out that the number-one rule of SEO is that search engines are necessary to being found on the web-without them, you're virtually inaccessible to people who don't know your site is out there already. His decision has attracted criticism from those who feel that he's shutting out new users and potential members. Despite the controversy, however, WebmasterWorld continues to be one of the more influential web-industry forums in the world. Brett would say it's because the website is established enough not to need search engine traffic-and he may well be right. Useful Websites
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