Haymarket agrees sale of PistonHeads to CarGurus
Discussion
hyphen said:
Bought by the Chinese a few years back. A lot of people stopped using it, not wanting the Chinese government to have their browsing history and all that.
Yes because giving the browsing history to the Americans is so much safer.oops, just realised what thread this is....
I mean, yes the Americans are amazing and can have all my info.
Sford said:
The whole site is being piss slow today. I've got less tabs open than normal it is painfully slow to even type in this box. Tried searching for a car just now and gave up. Has something changed over the weekend? Wasn't this slow on Friday.
Maybe all the hamsters have been freed?The new owners will get in and find a note saying there’s no money or servers or whatever makes it function etc left
The Crack Fox said:
Surely the value of this site, to the user, is the ease of interaction with others for exchanging car-related twaddle. Maybe, occasionally, to flog or buy a car, too, for which we're happy to spend a few quid. As the traffic declines (like all forums, it seems) there's seemingly a panic from the owners about monetising, and an upswing in the amount of adverts to keep the money coming in. Which forces more users away, resulting in a further loss of revenue from ad sales, which further feeds the need for more, even more intrusive adverts... feeding a horrible decline. 
Haymarket bought an online community. They tried to monetise it by just focusing on the car sales section and shoving in loads of rubbish and irrelevant advertising but weren’t willing to pay enough to develop the forums.
Now the forums are finally falling apart as they try to make the last few £ out of advertising revenue.
Will the new owners just want the classifieds or will they also recognise the worth of buying a huge online community?
ashleyman said:
I use Safari on an iPhone with AdBlock and find that PH will load half the page and then when you scroll down it's just black, then after 30 seconds or so it will load the rest. Only happens on PH, will Brave fix this>?
Yes. I can’t decide if it’s really worth waiting the download of the page in safari or going to a new app just to read PHs though.
El stovey said:
ashleyman said:
I use Safari on an iPhone with AdBlock and find that PH will load half the page and then when you scroll down it's just black, then after 30 seconds or so it will load the rest. Only happens on PH, will Brave fix this>?
Yes. I can’t decide if it’s really worth waiting the download of the page in safari or going to a new app just to read PHs though.
pc.iow said:
El stovey said:
ashleyman said:
I use Safari on an iPhone with AdBlock and find that PH will load half the page and then when you scroll down it's just black, then after 30 seconds or so it will load the rest. Only happens on PH, will Brave fix this>?
Yes. I can’t decide if it’s really worth waiting the download of the page in safari or going to a new app just to read PHs though.
Can confirm that the combination of using AdBlock Plus and AdGuard solve the lag issues and make the site useable again.
Edited by ashleyman on Monday 10th December 14:47
tter.
Is the classifieds really worth that much though? The searching isn't the best and while it used to be my 'go to' I have never actually bought a car from it. More to get a feel of value of cars when looking at other sources like forums that I'm on (TZ-UK, VX220.org.uk or other owner specific forums to the item I am looking to buy).
Sford said:
Is the classifieds really worth that much though? The searching isn't the best and while it used to be my 'go to' I have never actually bought a car from it. More to get a feel of value of cars when looking at other sources like forums that I'm on (TZ-UK, VX220.org.uk or other owner specific forums to the item I am looking to buy).
I believe it's the third biggest in the UK behind Auto Trader and eBay. Sford said:
Is the classifieds really worth that much though? The searching isn't the best and while it used to be my 'go to' I have never actually bought a car from it. More to get a feel of value of cars when looking at other sources like forums that I'm on (TZ-UK, VX220.org.uk or other owner specific forums to the item I am looking to buy).
Its not bad.I use it, the search is clunky but powerful. If you are after a specific model/engine/gearbox/trim its much easier to filter right down than autotrader and ebay is fully of wideboys. Its also a reasonably well known brand even outside of the closer community. Certainly I dont know a car-enthusiast who doesn't know of the site.
Your buying the brand and the users, not the website. Certainly if you are a tech company, improving/evolving/replacing that its what you do.
Daniel
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