Not a fan of the meebo bar. When I first saw it I thought some nasty had slipped by AVG. Noticed the slower screenload times as well. I've got it minimized.I understand the need to bring in a few extra dollars, but I'm not convinced that this would be the best way to do it. :(
I'm really concerned about the spyware, adware aspect of this thing. I decided to attempt to connect to my facebook chat with the thing, and of course, per facebook, it wanted to access all my information. I am not blocking so far, but in terms of clicking on the thing, can anyone provide me with some sort of confirmation that its not going to steal my life?*Edit: For the record I'm not against the advertising, you guys provide (imo) a fantastic service, for free and one that I wouldn't do without with one exception, I need to trust this thing...
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
I would suggest making a bigger announcement, because I drove myself mad searching for spyware or toolbar add ons trying to figure out where it came from. Other than that issue, it is fine, not very obtrusive.
Is there any reason why Wowhead doesn't make attempts to have sponsors or similar methods of obtaining funding rather then sticking to ads? It seems a bit odd that a major site such as Wowhead hasn't gone this route to obtain funding since the traffic of the site is fairly high and would be a fairly big bonus when interviewing around for some sponsors. I'm not against all ads, some are fine such as the still images that you guys use.But I agree with others in the thread, once flash, java, videos/gifs, and the like come to play, I block that container. Sadly, this lands up blocking still-images too since the containers used are the same. But I am not one to take security of my machine lightly. Flash is known for its wonderful exploits each revision, and I've seen gaming sites lose tons of traffic because of allowing Flash ads which later ended up with users being exploited and having their accounts hacked as a result of it.
Personally, I dislike it. For one, the bright white is very displeasing to look at with the darker background.Second off, while it is a clever way to get some advertisement across, it's basically implementing social networking, a feature that really does not need to be added to a forum, of all things. It's pretty redundant to go cruising through the forums for posts while chatting to a friend on Facebook, or AIM. As someone who clearly detests social networking, and doesn't hide it at all, I'm probably just looking at this in a biased manner, but when was the last time you Digg'd a WoWhead page, then posted it on Facebook, blogged on Twitter, and then messaged all your friends online of it?The other features of it, such as the instant Talent Calculator and such, are a good idea that add for simple navigation, but again, it's really not that hard to simply press "Home" on my keyboard, and click it manually.Nice attempt, and I understand where it's coming from, but it has my disapproval.
I don't like it mainly because I don't have a meebo account and don't really have a need for one. Also the advertising on it gets really big and abnoxious a lotof the time
I guess I will be the minority in this thread.1. I don´t find it obtrusive because it is at the bottom of the screen and is clearly different from the rest of the webpage. I guess my mind just easily ignores it. There is also nothing flashing or moving, which again makes it easy to just ignore. Also, I don´t think it takes up much real estate at all. Generally I am reading posts or comments, which I slowly scroll down anyway.2. Does this thing really bring you guys substantial money? If so, do what you have to do... but as someone with my own websites with ads, the small ads that actually do appear probably are pulling in very low cpm. I have rarely seen an actual ad on there.. most of the time it is just the wowhead shortcuts.As a consumer, I say no big deal at this point. If it is making you money, then good. But I would think from your perspective you could make much more money by just adding more banner ads along the right side of the screen. There is a lot of unused ´black´ there. ( I personaly prefer the meebo bar because it doesn´t flash or move)
I have to agree I personally find the meebo bar lag-inducing and intensly annoying (it is kind of like the missing pixel on an LCD monitor once you see it, it becomes a focal point and impossible to ignore), yes I can block it using ad-blockplus but I would prefer to maybe have an option on my user settings page to turn it off or on, that way community members can choose to display it or not, I am sure that some of the members will find it useful whilst some will not (I would fall into the not category) I personally have no use for any of the - share this, facebook etc - social networking sites in fact I was quite happy to display all ads on wowhead until that annoying flash advert with sound appeared advertising some kind of smartphone(again a device for which I have no use) although reading the earlier stickied postings it looks like that has been dealt with.For a bit of history I tend to run WoW in a window and have Wowhead open in the background usually on the quests page so I can find descriptions and comments quickly and easily, however since the appearence of the meebo bar I have found that even scrolling up and down the wowhead page causes intermittent sound dropout to occur in the wow background window and if I really go to town scrolling up and down it will crash my computer completely probably due to it using all the available system resources, a fact that occured now as I was typing this comment.So in summary I would like to see an option to enable or disable the meebo bar in the user settings page if possible
For some reason, I can no longer see the tooltips; keep getting "no response from server :(" errors.I wonder if this is related.
It's extremely terrible in implementation, slowing down page loading and overall much more offensive than "regular" banners.Glad it was easy to get rid of, at least. Didn't even need to fire up Wireshark.P.S.There's no such thing like "high quality ads", they all crap, no matter how much you pay for them - crap can't be good for more than soil enrichment. May it all rot.