Where have all the Bahamas Social Sites Gone?

Today’s Bahamian internet ‘social’ landscape is pretty barren after starting off with quite a bang in the early, heady days of the Internet’s discovery in the region.

Back in the late 90s, and the early 2000’s we had many vibrant Bahamas centric sites like the Bahamas.com internet forum, Bahamanet.com, BahamiansOnline.com, Bahamas-mon.com Forums, Oii.net (Abaco Forum), Bahamascope.net, Bahamateens.net/com, Freeportteens.com and Briland.com that over time many have fallen by the wayside as the Bahamian and Visitors to the Bahamas have been pulled away to more global sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, hi5.com, blackplanet.com and tagged.com.

Sites that came later were, BahamasB2B.com Forums and Community (during the B2B consolidation after the Consumer – eyeballs casing fluff entertainment sites – bubble burst); iBahamian.com Forums (now folded into BahamiansOnline.com) BahamasIssues.com Forums, Dutty.net, Extremevip.com, MyBahamasChat.com, numerous Auctions communities (ebay clones) and Classifieds community sites (Craiglist clones).

Some new websites (insert here, OnBahamas.com, MyTubeBahamas.com – video site and Bahamians.net) have popped up, but after a brief splash on the scene which usually fizzles once the marketing money (read: Google adwords) runs out and the hits decline and any Google Adsense income fades the sites usually end up as internet ghost towns. Side note; as most experienced Caribbean website developers and owners find out, Google Adsense revenues decline drastically over a short period of time as Google updates its algorithms to pay sites less and less after it realizes the Caribbean audiences are not very valuable ecommerce target, insert whoever you want to blame here.

What are we missing in keeping our own culturally rich and intellectually stimulating social sites going?

Well lets take a look at some of the Bahamian sites that have survived past the obligatory 4-6 months of internet life.

Oii.net: They have stuck to their core competencies of being a much needed info source and community for the local residents, expat and repeat tourist to the Abacos island chains.

BahamasIssues.com: This site has weathered the storm by attracting and keeping a core audience who are satisfied to lead Bahamian centric discussions and is a good source of local gossip and news

BahamiansOnline.com: This site has stayed to its Chat focus and overtime has added additional facebook like features and adds to its relevance and interest levels. Again it has maintained a core unit of members who shoot the breeze on its forums and chat rooms.

Bahamasb2b.com: This site has survived just on its massive Bahamas, News (although mostly sensationalistic) and other relevant Bahamian information database. Its Forum has somewhat fallen off as it became too negative and its offshoot Bahamas Community site hasn’t quite caught on to a large base, but it is what I would deem a survivor.

Also worthy of mention is the BahamasLocal.com (a site trying to capitalize on the search localization phase of 2008/2009) that although light on social features, seems to be heading that way with its community based review sections.

Barring the fact that some of the sites have died a rightful death (too much profanity, vulgarity etc..), we as Bahamians and Caribbean people should be able to attract sizeable audiences both from our domestic audiences and from ‘internet tourism’ (Americans and others from around the world flock to our shores for our weather, sand, sea AND our people and culture).

I bet this story has been repeated across the Caribbean, please leave your comments and thoughts…

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