My Space's success has not gone unnoticed. No, I'm not talking about pedophiles. I'm referring to the Lords and Lordettes of the "new media," who are busy trying to make your space their space so they can make advertisers' money into their money. It didn't take a great leap of imagination for entrepreneurial e-pistonheads to imagine a My Space for cars, where owners throw down pics and stats of their wheels to engage in the guilty pleasures of automotive exhibitionism. Boompa.com is one of the more interesting examples of this new genre, combining the usual "rate-a-ride" meters with some genuinely useful features with relatively clean (if cartoonish) design. I rang up co-founder Ethan Lance to find out if a lack of taste makes waste, or, eventually, a cyber fortune.
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Nice site. Cleaner and more mature design than CarDomain.
According to Alexa traffic rankings, over the last week 11.5 out of every Internet users went to Boompa.com compared to 260 per million for Car Domain. It looks like Boompa has a long way to go and they are not trending upward. Maybe this exposure on TTAC, which attracted 34 of every million Internet users last week, will help them out.
*Off topic* I’m seeing ads! And I don’t feel violated. I think this might work out. Viva TTAC!
Robert thanks for covering Boompa.com. Alot of sites like ours are popping up trying to at least offer something new to the vehicle enthusiast. Most sites dedicated to cars are message boards only.
@William
We just launched but I think we’re doing well for a site by 2 guys spending their own money to run it. And dont pay too much attention to Alexa, hehe, unless they make us look good! Oh and Cardomain is definetly the Goliath to our David.
Well Mr. Boompa… CarDomain is too much like MySpace = lots of carp and no style. Which is why I don’t spend any time on either one. But I was blown away by the layout and concept in Boompa. Fantastic! If I had a cool car I’d put it up on Boompa before I’d even consider CarDomain.
@RickP
Hey thanks for the compliments. The nice thing about the site is that you can categorize the cars that you put on the site as “I own this” or “I want to own it”, “I used to own it”, etc etc.
The nice thing about that is were letting people talk about cars (vehicles really) in general. And you can add your own history/descriptions of models. In the end we’ll have a very cool encyclopedia of all things automotive.
Example, here’s my page for the Tesla Roadster: http://www.boompa.com/ethan/100-torque/865/
Boompa.com caters to the more serious automotive enthusiast. Although robert did make fun of some of our users with their bling bling cars. For me, I’d love Boompa’s community to blossom into a car restoration site and also cover user’s who are buying the latest models.
Boompa and CarDomain serve functions; but more as blogs for everyone. CarDomain has more traffic, perhaps simply because it has been around longer. I applaud the creators of Boompa’s desire to have it “blossom into a car restoration site.” However – and this is a big “however” – most peopel I know who restore cars, most especially the real classics – such as are certified as such by the Classic Car Club of America – are more than a little skeptical about the Internet and those spend most of their lives involved with it. Some of them don’t even believe me when I tell them, “Well, you can make a living with it, if you play it right.”
Dave Tatom, who is a mechanical genius who builds and rebuild Ford flathead V8s (circa 1932 through ’53) for restorations and street rods, told me once, when I brought up using a computer in my work, “Computers are the biggest waste of time ever invented.”
Dave is the kind of guy who, while believing in dynamometers, still casts a jaundiced eye towards computer screens. But if Boompa could somehow bring guys with the knowledge base and skill set of Dave Tatom to share with the younger bucks, via the Internet, it would be a real accomplishment.
With all due respect to CarDomain.com, they sure don’t seem likely to do that. A Car Place.com, run by Dave Zatz, is doing more to help people work on their cars than CarDomain.com will likely ever do.
Two corrections to last post: In the first paragraph the word is “people” not the misspelling I wrote. And at the start of the third ‘graph, I meant to write, “Dave Tatom builds and rebuilds….”
@Terry
I agree with what you are saying. My late grandfather, who the site is named after (Boompa was his nickname) would never ever use the internet. And we aren’t going to be able to compete with the small community sites that have a wealth of knowledge about a specific model of cars. We’re not too worried about that though, and wish those sites continued success.
Our site can actually serve those message board sites well. You can upload all your photos to Boompa and then on your favorite message boards just copy and paste the link to your photos into that message board post. So small sites dont have to worry about hosting images.
As we grow, we also encourage our users to link to and promote their own narrower communties; within their boompa blogs, and news submissions, and boompa Groups/Events sections.
Yep, I’d love boompa to be focused around restorations –that’s just me though– but with social networks in the end it’s going to be up to the audience that naturally forms. More than likely, it’s going to be an audience with less years of automotive experience then my Father or Grandfather. The young kids.
There’s room for both the niche car sites and a generalist vehicle sites though. Most savvy internet users nowadays hold accounts across multiple sites and dont stick to one messageboard or social network.
In the end, we are just 2 web guys who — we think — build sites pretty darn well. We hope Boompa.com becomes an entertaining and educational place for vehicle lovers.
-Ethan Lance
co-founder
http://www.boompa.com
Well… so much for “My Space for cars” – less than 3 years after this article appeared, Boompa.com is dead – RIP Boompa