from www.miaminewtimes.com – Gus Moore, founder and owner of Miami Beach 411, a decade-old website with one of the city’s oldest and most active online community forums, has a hefty bone to pick with the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.
It all began last week when Moore was surfing GMCVB’s website and logged into its community forum. Moore, who could very well be called a leader in local social media for bringing a community of travelers and locals together online — years before Twitter and Facebook — was appalled by what he saw: An eye-popping infestation of porn spam, mainly from Russia, with NSFW photos.
In a blog post, Moore questioned why no one was moderating the forum when the GMCVB has a budget of $23 million and a staff of 70 and receives funds from the City of Miami Beach: “Seventy full-time employees and you can’t control this garbage? The City of Miami Beach gives you $5 million a year to promote our city, and this is how you do it?”
Moore then called for a ban on the GMCVB: “Until they get a system in place to ensure this never happens again, I am calling for an industry-wide boycott of their services. I’m asking journalists and bloggers to stop covering their events, I’m asking advertisers to not use their services, I’m asking the city to terminate the contract, and finally, I’m asking GMCVB to remove the offensive content and issue a formal apology.”
An apology was never issued, but the entire forum — not just the explicit and embarrassing content — was removed. (Interestingly, the GMCVB was protecting its Twitter account but unprotected it soon after yours truly tweeted about it.)
