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The blurred lines of Livestrong - the spin bike sham

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Dec 5, 2010
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According to Skippy over on FC.com we've been 'shut down'.

Sorry to disappoint.

So, Skippy. When you pop back over here to cross link to one of your many blogs which you're attempting to further between here and FC.com perhaps you'd like to make a comment regarding the information & evidence we have provided you with (to quote myself, page 9 post #90 as well as plenty of others) or would you like to fly into another apoplectic fit and stomp off accusing us of tall-poppy bashing?
 
Velocentric said:
According to Skippy over on FC.com we've been 'shut down'.

Sorry to disappoint.

So, Skippy. When you pop back over here to cross link to one of your many blogs which you're attempting to further between here and FC.com perhaps you'd like to make a comment regarding the information & evidence we have provided you with (to quote myself, page 9 post #90 as well as plenty of others) or would you like to fly into another apoplectic fit and stomp off accusing us of tall-poppy bashing?

Reading through some comments on fatcyclist made me realize that fatcyclist is the replacement for The Paceline. It has the same blind unquestioning idiocy that dominated The Paceline. If you can get past the creepy Scientology-like feel of the place then it is really quite funny. We really need to get Jeff Vader to post over there.
 
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Anonymous

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Be interesting to see any responses on the fat cyclist to my post.

My question would be how a cancer awareness charity can have over 9 MILLION DOLLARS in legal bills in one year. SIX MILLION DOLLARS in salaries.. Someone is making a vast amount of money from well intentioned donations. That to me is wrong.

The other BIG issue I have is that there are two companies, one a charitable foundation, and one a profit making company that share the same name. The .org and .com have become so inextricably linked that you have to wonder how many people really know the difference.
When the .org spend money on advertising, are they PURELY advertising the .org or does the .com benefit (ultimately financially and in a profit making way) from that advertising. Does the .com make money as a result of the .org's publicity.

A simple example, and question. How would the public feel if Oxfam for example, as well as being a charity, ran a dotcom company that was profit making, with shareholders. It has the same name, just .com on the end, and is registered as a profit making enterpirse. How would you feel if there was as well as savethechildren a savethechildren.COM profit making company with shareholders.

How about on one hand, the red cross (the charity) and then REDCROSS.COM which was OWNED BY INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE ON THE BAORD OF THE CHARITY, but the .com was there to make money for its shareholders. How Would we feel about those boardmembers on the charity, who were also profiting financially from the profit making side. Is there a conflict of intrest.

Lance profits from livestrong.com - For me, that is wrong.

part 2

As a follow on to my previous post. Here are a couple of links showing the amount of traffic the .org and the .com recieve

livestrong.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/livestrong.org#
As you can see, ranked 36,000ish in the US
Average % share over 3 months - 0.00191

Now lets take a look at livestrong.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/livestrong.com#
ranked inside the top 400
average share over 3 months - 0.10180

For those with poor maths, that means that the PROFIT MAKING .com has over 100x the traffic of the .org

lance promotes livestrong, we see the yellow bands everywhere, but what are they really promoting.. The foundation that is ranked outside the top 35000 visited websites in America (which really is awful), or the profit making .com that is in the top 400??????
 
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Youve got to say, for all the advertising and publicity and awareness they do, being the 36,000th most popular website in america is a pretty poor return on their investment :D
 
Apr 9, 2009
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TeamSkyFans said:
Youve got to say, for all the advertising and publicity and awareness they do, being the 36,000th most popular website in america is a pretty poor return on their investment :D

I think it just shows that people are not yet aware that they are unaware. Once they visit the site, they will gain awareness of that fact.

The $9 million figure for "legal and professional" jumped out at me too, and there's no further explanation in the financials or the annual report. It's possible that a large portion of that is paid towards lobbying efforts and the state and federal level, but who knows. It's still a huge chunk of their "program expenses" (roughly one third).
 
Oct 25, 2010
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I think the point is... to have a TOP 400 website (the .com) is worth biggie bucks...

14ikgte.jpg
 
Jul 15, 2009
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I just had a quick browse around the .com site and maybe I'm missing something but its fairly hard to find anywhere you can actually spend money on it.

I suppose there would be income generated through advertising.
 
Oct 25, 2010
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petethedrummer said:
I just had a quick browse around the .com site and maybe I'm missing something but its fairly hard to find anywhere you can actually spend money on it.

I suppose there would be income generated through advertising.

Dude, with that kind of traffic, you can throw up nothing but photos of a naked Mother Theresa, and so long as you had Google AdWords somewhere on the page, you could kick back and drink pina coladas for the next several years.

The traffic is the value. It's gold Jerry. GOLD!

64352.gif
 
Jan 6, 2011
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BroDeal said:
Reading through some comments on fatcyclist made me realize that fatcyclist is the replacement for The Paceline. It has the same blind unquestioning idiocy that dominated The Paceline. If you can get past the creepy Scientology-like feel of the place then it is really quite funny. We really need to get Jeff Vader to post over there.

Look, surely we can all agree, even if the head of a charity does prove to be a cheater and a liar that does not mean we should question his character or suspect his motives in promoting his brand “Livestrong”.

You need to think positive like the rest of us, only then will you understand that subjecting behavior to scrutiny is negative and unproductive to the bottom line. Think positive and most of all Live strong.



Probably too much but upon reading the average over there, it fits right in.
 
Galmozzi said:
Look, surely we can all agree, even if the head of a charity does prove to be a cheater and a liar that does not mean we should question his character or suspect his motives in promoting his brand “Livestrong”.

Why not?

He is clearly commercially motivated in his promotion of the LiveSTRONG brand. This is a slight on both the work Lance does for his charity and the LAF itself.
 
Galmozzi said:
Look, surely we can all agree, except for Ferminal, come on Ferminal.

So you think it's perfectly fine for charities (or the chairman/founder) to offload their branding to commercial enterprise who then use it to accrue profits, rather than donations?

Should MSF sign away their name to a corporation who then uses it to generate profits? Do you think MSF's remarkable standing in the community wouldn't be diminished at all after such a transaction (likewise, the key stakeholders of the corporation exploiting the name)?
 
Ferminal said:
So you think it's perfectly fine for charities (or the chairman/founder) to offload their branding to commercial enterprise who then use it to accrue profits, rather than donations?

Should MSF sign away their name to a corporation who then uses it to generate profits? Do you think MSF's remarkable standing in the community wouldn't be diminished at all after such a transaction (likewise, the key stakeholders of the corporation exploiting the name)?

Ease up a little. Galmozzi is from Canada.

You know, the place with enough of a sense of humor we invite old Presidents for speaches:

"This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn't think of a better place to give it than Calgary, Canada."

You have to understand the sense of humor. Never let a blizzard get in the way of someone putting a foot in their mouth.

Dave.
 
D-Queued said:
Ease up a little. Galmozzi is from Canada.

You know, the place with enough of a sense of humor we invite old Presidents for speaches:

"This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn't think of a better place to give it than Calgary, Canada."

You have to understand the sense of humor. Never let a blizzard get in the way of someone putting a foot in their mouth.

Dave.

Ugh, sorry, it's too much for me, this stuff is like at least the 5th reverse, way too deep for me! WonderLance never goes past the 2nd and I think that's about my limit :p

I hope you can accept my shallowness, Galmozzi!
 
Jan 6, 2011
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I am new, but mostly normal. That WonderLance is a scream. My posts will usually be serious but tonight a bit goofy. Ferminal rocks.
 
Jun 20, 2009
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LOL!!! Just bought Mrs Laziali a spin bike with 22kg flywheel brand new on ebay for $250. What sort of clown would pay $1700, or even $700 plus a "cancer" donation???:eek:
 
laziali said:
LOL!!! Just bought Mrs Laziali a spin bike with 22kg flywheel brand new on ebay for $250. What sort of clown would pay $1700, or even $700 plus a "cancer" donation???:eek:

It sounds like a good scam.

There you are, selling a crappy exercise bike for $650 and making a $50 profit. Suddenly genius strikes. You can jack the price and give $1000 to Liestrong. But instead of setting the price at $1650, you set it at $1700. The extra $50 won't be noticed in the huge price increase because the buyers know they are overpaying anyway. Now instead of making $50 a unit, you are making $100.
 
Just saw an interview with LA on the news ....

Said that he has 'personally' donated $50,000 to the Queensland Flood Appeal. I wonder if this is from him or from his 'personal' charity .... :rolleyes:
 
AussieGoddess said:
Just saw an interview with LA on the news ....

Said that he has 'personally' donated $50,000 to the Queensland Flood Appeal. I wonder if this is from him or from his 'personal' charity .... :rolleyes:

I'd say it was from him. He's much more generous with the charity's money (Haiti got $250k last year). Still, you'd think if he was going to brag about how generous he was, he could use a little more of the $2m he's collecting whilst over there. It's like collecting $200 from the bookie and tipping him $5 in return.
 
Oct 29, 2010
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What's the status of the SI expose that was supposed to be out yesterday?

I've been skimming this thread but didn't see an update.
 
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Anonymous

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Gaear Grimsrud said:
What's the status of the SI expose that was supposed to be out yesterday?

I've been skimming this thread but didn't see an update.
20th was the date i heard.