Soxtalk: A History

[Jake]

I was wondering earlier about when Soxtalk started and thought this was a good thread idea. Who started Soxtalk? When? Some of you long time posters may enjoy reminiscing.

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Jason started it and a small core quickly became regulars, IIRC. I know i joined about a year later. I used to post on the espn.com boards with ss2k5, iwritecode and a few others. SS2k5 convinced me to make the switch

[Buehrle>Wood]

ESPN boards back in the day were win. I know a lot of the first posters here came from there, and I eventually made the switch too once those boards became beyond awful. But really, they used to be great.

Edited August 27, 2008 by Buehrle>Wood

[Jake]

This might be fun to try and look at for some...especially the different posters:

 

link

[ChiSox_Sonix]

ESPN boards back in the day were win. I know a lot of the first posters here came from there, and I eventually made the switch too once those boards became beyond awful. But really, they used to be great.

 

 

I remember you from there too. I was much younger then and spent a ton of time on the computer. I had over 5K posts there before I came here. Those boards used to be a lot of fun, even with the trolls that would come over. I remember having actualy baseball chat with a Royals fan for an entire year through that board a year when they were decent. I also remember how you got your name; with the long running MB>KW and KW>MB debate that was on both Chicago boards seemingly all the time haha

[Cali]

Haha.

 

Back when I actually used to post thing relevant to White Sox baseball...

[Texsox]

Someone, I thought it was SS, suggested I post over here. But for obvious reasons, no one wants credit for that recruiting now. There was time when PA, Steff, SS, and a few others had positions that allowed for a lot more daytime posting. That was some of my favorite times on a message board.

[RockRaines]

Im back there in 04 I believe, posted under the name babybearhater before this one.

[Chisoxfn]

SoxNet.net was initially founded in 2000/2001. The site was a news site which was founded by Mario Scalise (Molto) and Jason Gage (myself). Molto was the actual founder though and I somehow stumbled upon to his post that he was going to start a White Sox website which he made on WSI (where I would read on occassion). SoxNet had a message board which I was in charge of (Mario was in charge of the news portion) and that board was part of a sports-network which had made up with numerous sites which had been affiliated with Rivals (sportsinfinity network). For about a full season we used that network as our forums and than after the network continued to have server issues we felt it was necessary to make the next step and establish Soxtalk.com (the baseball fans forums had a core group of about 20 posters and would get about 100 posts a day, which we thought was insanely busy).

 

Soxtalk was my first venture into the server end side of things (from installing/building the forum to using PHP to make some customizations). Early in the Soxtalk days, WSI ran into an issue where they banned numerous members. We marketed and reached out to these members (which included being the official sponsor of SoxNRoll Radio) and eventually established a nice core-set of posters. Shortly after we gained a chunk of posters from WSI, we than lucked out into ESPN's forums being poorly moderated (we would consistently market our site by posting the articles on various forums, including ESPN/MLB) and picked up the likes of SS2k and slowly must have obtained about 90% of the consistent White Sox posters on such forums.

 

At that point Soxtalk had established itself. It would consistently get 1000 posts a day and was filled with action. We've grown many many more times since but the one thing thats never changed is our dedication to the members of this site and the Chicago White Sox.

 

In the middle of all this there was a time where this site was integrated with the "Insiders" network. This was something we thought was going to be a brilliant move which would give us the ability to provide the members with better content (giving us full blown credentials and access to getty images). However, there were differences of opinion between us and the people at the Insiders and legal actions had been threatened. There was a couple week span where we actually and we thought we might lose the site, however, we lucked out (although we were forced to close SoxNet.net at this time).

 

FutureSox & Soxtalk managed to survive and now we've continued to work on growing the network.

[Palehosefan]

lol at the Insiders guys trying to make you force your readers to pay for some info. Glad you guys didn't merge, as Fanhome completely fell apart.

[knightni]

I found it by an article link on ESPN's message board.

[southsideirish71]

I remember you from there too. I was much younger then and spent a ton of time on the computer. I had over 5K posts there before I came here. Those boards used to be a lot of fun, even with the trolls that would come over. I remember having actualy baseball chat with a Royals fan for an entire year through that board a year when they were decent. I also remember how you got your name; with the long running MB>KW and KW>MB debate that was on both Chicago boards seemingly all the time haha

 

The original ESPNers were a good group. I was over there as well. Hawkiconk, Rdivaldi, Mike, and a few others were over in the ESPN world. At lot of these guys went to other boards, fell off the end of the universe, or arrived here. ESPN wasnt bad, and we had a lot of good banter with some of the other boards. Ofx over on the ESPN Twins board, Imann over on the ESPN Royals board were a few I got along with quite a bit. One particular anti-fan and his nonsense and the endless trolls trashing the board were the reasons I found myself here.

 

 

[shipps]

Actually I gave Mario the idea.I just didnt have a computer at the time to make a move on it and original idea was to write letters to fellow Soxfans .He also sold my bill-less baseball cap idea to Jason Gage that I look forward to being screwed on also..

[ChiSox_Sonix]

The original ESPNers were a good group. I was over there as well. Hawkiconk, Rdivaldi, Mike, and a few others were over in the ESPN world. At lot of these guys went to other boards, fell off the end of the universe, or arrived here. ESPN wasnt bad, and we had a lot of good banter with some of the other boards. Ofx over on the ESPN Twins board, Imann over on the ESPN Royals board were a few I got along with quite a bit. One particular anti-fan and his nonsense and the endless trolls trashing the board were the reasons I found myself here.

 

Imann was actually the exact guy i was talking about.

 

I forgot about RD. Shame he doesnt post here

[SnB]

looking at those banners in 03 and 04 is giving me weird memories.

 

i totally forgot this site was blue for a long, long time in the beginning

[jasonxctf]

yeah i was one of the first people to signup. i came via ESPN boards.

[Whitewashed in '05]

I posted on the MLB board for a while before I found this site by searching for white sox forums or something on yahoo. I lurked around for about a year before I decided to register. I couldn't tolerate the MLB board anymore with some bad sox fan posters dominating the board. I used the screen name ChiSoxFan on that mlb board.

 

While this board could be negative and tiring at times it's still better than visiting those troll filled boards.

[mreye]

I posted on the MLB board for a while before I found this site by searching for white sox forums or something on yahoo. I lurked around for about a year before I decided to register. I couldn't tolerate the MLB board anymore with some bad sox fan posters dominating the board. I used the screen name ChiSoxFan on that mlb board.

 

While this board could be negative and tiring at times it's still better than visiting those troll filled boards.

 

That's basically my story. I think I found it with a search as well. I joined the same day as SS2K5 (I think one member # later) by chance and we slowly figured out we worked together at CBOE, rode the same train and both lived in Indiana. Small world.

 

[jasonxctf]

is there a way to find out if members # 1-7 are still around? I'd love to know my seniority.

[Steff]

is there a way to find out if members # 1-7 are still around? I'd love to know my seniority.

 

For whatever reason, the #'s don't run that way. There were a lot more members than 7 when you joined.

[Chisoxfn]

For whatever reason, the #'s don't run that way. There were a lot more members than 7 when you joined.

Yep it runs inverse starting at my number. So essentially Member #1 is #127 and Member #127 is #1.

 

However, once you get to #128, that is actually #128 so to speak. It happened when the site switched from XMB Board to Invision (and we had to convert the mysql table to invision which was a very difficult process for my programming ignorant self).

[Molto]

SoxNet.net was initially founded in 2000/2001. The site was a news site which was founded by Mario Scalise (Molto) and Jason Gage (myself). Molto was the actual founder though and I somehow stumbled upon to his post that he was going to start a White Sox website which he made on WSI (where I would read on occassion). SoxNet had a message board which I was in charge of (Mario was in charge of the news portion) and that board was part of a sports-network which had made up with numerous sites which had been affiliated with Rivals (sportsinfinity network). For about a full season we used that network as our forums and than after the network continued to have server issues we felt it was necessary to make the next step and establish Soxtalk.com (the baseball fans forums had a core group of about 20 posters and would get about 100 posts a day, which we thought was insanely busy).

 

Soxtalk was my first venture into the server end side of things (from installing/building the forum to using PHP to make some customizations). Early in the Soxtalk days, WSI ran into an issue where they banned numerous members. We marketed and reached out to these members (which included being the official sponsor of SoxNRoll Radio) and eventually established a nice core-set of posters. Shortly after we gained a chunk of posters from WSI, we than lucked out into ESPN's forums being poorly moderated (we would consistently market our site by posting the articles on various forums, including ESPN/MLB) and picked up the likes of SS2k and slowly must have obtained about 90% of the consistent White Sox posters on such forums.

 

At that point Soxtalk had established itself. It would consistently get 1000 posts a day and was filled with action. We've grown many many more times since but the one thing thats never changed is our dedication to the members of this site and the Chicago White Sox.

 

In the middle of all this there was a time where this site was integrated with the "Insiders" network. This was something we thought was going to be a brilliant move which would give us the ability to provide the members with better content (giving us full blown credentials and access to getty images). However, there were differences of opinion between us and the people at the Insiders and legal actions had been threatened. There was a couple week span where we actually and we thought we might lose the site, however, we lucked out (although we were forced to close SoxNet.net at this time).

 

FutureSox & Soxtalk managed to survive and now we've continued to work on growing the network.

 

 

That's pretty much it. The board was originally under SoxNet.net, but thought it was better to have a seperate name for the board to make it easier on the users and to give it a seperate identity. Good thing that happened, because SoxTalk.com would have went under with SoxNet. It was devastating having to give up SoxNet, but very glad SoxTalk was kept and it is what it is today. The early going was pretty rough, but as you said, we ran into some luck with the demise of the ESPN board (I was a regular there), WSI banning-ways, and there was actually another White Sox site/board that had to close and brought some posters to SoxTalk.com, although I can't remember the name off-hand.

[whitesoxbrian]

is there a way to find out if members # 1-7 are still around? I'd love to know my seniority.

At the top of your screen, hit members, join date, ascending order.

[Chisoxfn]

That's pretty much it. The board was originally under SoxNet.net, but thought it was better to have a seperate name for the board to make it easier on the users and to give it a seperate identity. Good thing that happened, because SoxTalk.com would have went under with SoxNet. It was devastating having to give up SoxNet, but very glad SoxTalk was kept and it is what it is today. The early going was pretty rough, but as you said, we ran into some luck with the demise of the ESPN board (I was a regular there), WSI banning-ways, and there was actually another White Sox site/board that had to close and brought some posters to SoxTalk.com, although I can't remember the name off-hand.

It was Soxfantatic.com or something like that. The site was ran by Spataro who is now a poster here (people may remember him as the person who made the posts that led to this site being published in Sports Illustrated).

 

I will always remember the day where we got the call that they were going to file a suit against us to close SoxNet. Pretty miserable ass day. Although I think we both learned a valuable lesson about business on that day.

[Molto]

Actually I gave Mario the idea.I just didnt have a computer at the time to make a move on it and original idea was to write letters to fellow Soxfans .He also sold my bill-less baseball cap idea to Jason Gage that I look forward to being screwed on also..

 

I remember you making fun of the time I spent I working on it ... and now you're a freaking moderator.