There’s no “bad” demographic, but the younger demographic is going to need something more appealing than a Jon B. album, an Obama watch party, and “good enough” email services before they become return visitors. I think RD has be more innovative

They are not even a year old yet, let’s support and try to encourage them through constructive critism and ideas that might help them grow.

re the slam at encouraging them to focus on mobile content. Almost every “black” media venture that has succeeded has provided something Black ppl could not get anywhere else. It wasn’t just branding something as “ours” or for us. If Mr. Johnson hadn’t srarted EBONY we would not have seen ourselves in PEOPLE or whatever existed back then. Same goes with black entertaiment blogs. If they didn’t cover OUR celebrities, you wouldn’t see them on “mainstream” sites. Same with television, radio, HBCUs on and one. But you see what happens when THEY start taking down barriers. WE stop supporting OUR own. If they focused on unique content instead of run of the millionaire apps they would be leading instead of following and online being first matters. There isn’t enough mobile content 4 US.

So Marcus has a legitimate concern that RD innovate. Just being branded as OURS isn’t enough. That’s not hating. That’s concern and nobody give RD more coverage than this blog. I hope Johnny Taylor buys a BANNER AD on BlackWeb20.com, RD’s biggest evangelists AND SUPPORTS THIS SITE IN A TANGIBLE WAY for the work you and your contributors do.

Keep trucking Marcus.

Secondly, I’d like to explain briefly why we launched our Email product. Initially, I did not want to introduce Email because I wanted to focus on making our search product the best identity search product on the market. But, after receiving almost weekly requests for email from our user community, our team decided to investigate if any of the other Black-targeted web properties were offering a quality, free Email product; we determined they weren’t and thus it made sense to offer a quality FREE product to satisfy an underserved community.

Based upon feedback from our community and general qualitative research about Email user behavior, we know most people, Black online users in particular, want a basic email tool that is aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, provides ample storage, gives them a way to send and receive personal messages from friends and family, and allows them to easily upload their contacts. We did that.

And while there are lots of other bells and whistles that we could’ve invested time and money creating for launch product, we concluded these features would not likely be perceived as value-add by most of our community — keeping in mind that most members of our user community are not the BlackWeb2.0 tech-savvy user.

So, we launched an Email product we’re proud of — one that gives a significant number of Black online users exactly what they want plus a few extras like calendaring and task tools.

We ask each of you to help us spread the word about RushmoreDrive.com and it’s new Email servive. As a new offering, we give you the chance to tell your friends, family and colleagues to get the email address of your choice (no need to add a number after your name because it’s already taken) from the first-of-its-kind search engine built FOR and BY the Black community.

We really appreciate you all covering RushmoreDrive.com and welcome all feedback.

Happy Holidays,

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr.
President & CEO
RushmoreDrive.com

Thanks for the love.