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Quality of posts is more important that board ranking. (IMHO). Some of us that are ranked high have been members for over a year. When the board first opened the discussions were more about business, not so much about people looking for funding today.

I find myself NOT answering or posting as much since I am not prepared to participate in funding anyone. There are times when I can offer advice, but then as a female...its what I do best . (wink)

If relative 'ease' mean just posting to be posting with trite little comments then I suppose it's up to each individual to make their own decisions. However remember that each members 'contributions' are saved and anyone can look them up. I hope no one remembers me as one of the 'posting just to be posting members'.

I have came to another conclusion about the top contributors on this board.

The conclusion is this:

All of the top contributors are not completely successful with there business. This lack of success allows us the ability to post for days in a row, hours upon hours a day because we have no work to do.

Take my business for example. When I have a free website to develop for someone, I am able to develop at my leisure, as there is not a deadline to reach for completion(within reason). If I had a ton of paying work, I would not have the time nor the need to post a multitude of responses.

So whether or not the comments are viewed as positive or not, any true business person understands that for an individual to have the time it takes to post to be a leader on this board, they do not have a service or product that is of complete success(at least as of yet).

This is not to take away from services or products that are in process, as it does take time for a quality product to take off in the market. Like me for example, I have enough time to post on a regular basis but not enough time to make a full time job of this.

DomainDiva is another example of this, she has a great product or service, that has just not taken off as of yet.

A few years from now, if we are successful, we will not care to or even try to post 24/7 on this board and most certainly not have the time.

You will of course find the usuall persons on this board, posting franitically and to no avail, the same repeitive posts, so that they can be number one.

I think that if some of us spend more time on building our business rather then frantically and manically posting, we might actually have a bit more success.

Check out Gary Vaynerhuk's keynote presentation at the recent Web 2.0 conference. A member on my social network was kind of enough to post it www.arealight.ning.com. He talks about how he used online engagement to help propel his business. He was responding to over 1000 e-mails a day etc. There's a service and viral marketing element to it. However, he admits he tried some things like a FaceBook app that overloaded him and got tired of answering the same questions like what wine goes best with fish. However, he persevered through it and attributes this to his success.

I agree, if you find yourself in the position to have the time to do this, then you probably are not otherwise employed. At the same time, if you've got the time and this can support your interests in developing a business, then investing it by engaging people online may be worthwhile...if not now then perhaps eventually. This is still a relatively new phenomena and there is a lot to have a positive outlook on. If you're posting junk, then that is not likely to do you any good either way. But if you focus on quality and actually are engaging people on subject, point, or to their interests, then that all adds equidy to your online social presence and reputation.

As i've been involved in research and development for my business for the better part of a year now, I've put my time into various social networking platforms and forum communities to see what I could develop and acquire some expertise into current business aspects. One thing that sets people apart is their activity. Quality needs to be a given. So if you have a rating system like here, that poses some risk of inflated values for people who post for the sake of posting. As I said, most of the top contributors here have managed to contribute significantly in my experience. So I actually agree with the ratings. Even where there is not necessarily an answer provided, the constructive participation adds to the community, encourage reciprocal or original posts, and represents a healthy community.

There's a lot of talk about social phenomena- how to influence it and how to apply some concepts of self-organization that people will be attracted to. You've got things out there like Digg etc and ways to vote some things up and down. There's also the collaborative user generated references such as Wikipedia or now the intelligent search of Wiki Search. If the trend continues in that direction, traditional SEO concepts will quickly become outdated and what will really matter is what people actually think of you, your activity, and what you are currently doing.

The competition is alive and well. It's just some people are picking their battles. SBOC is not a closed environment independent from the rest of the online world. Being on the leaderboard associates you with something here. However, the merits of that depend on your subjective interpretation given quality activity and everything else that is to be found going on. Overall, I think it's a good thing for now. I've noted plenty of discussions by top contributors with concern for the integrity of this site. The ratings give some credibility, something to be happy about when you get attention from those people, and immediately something to shoot for that inspires activity. Despite the majority of posts being close to spam, the quantity serves to help this community rank higher on search engines. There's really no reason to worry to much about the implications of this forum community. If it becomes obsolete any time soon, then the top contributors would suffer the most. However, the ones with a positive reputation with more people will have plenty of connections to build anew upon.

I try to keep on topic and satisfy my own curiousities concerning someones post. I don't really consider myself in any race, the points thing is just numbers to remind me how much I've contributed to this community. I'm still new, but I'm try at least

I just found out about this board. Although I have plenty to do work-wise, I enjoy being part of a forum where I can unwind and still learn at the same time. Does anyone know when this board was first created? How many of you have been here for a year or longer?

Lighthouse 24.... Thank you for pointing that out to me.