Years ago, I conducted a personal interview with Jack Rankin, founder and owner of a new classifieds website from San Diego. He had worked tirelessly on the project and eventually, it outgrew his own abilities to maintain the website. So the project, with all 30,000 plus users, was pulled from the internet and shelved for a number of years. Findiit.org was a brand lost, not for any other reason, than he could just not find people to hop on board the project in time.
Mr. Rankin had sadly, had to pull the website down for redevelopment. This redevelopment had fallen into the hands of a company in Mission Valley, called SIXeed. They had what was thought to be a cohesive team for the new launch. However, the 'dream' was once again halted when according to Mr. Rankin, he found SIXeed had stolen the idea and concept and launched their own brand called Z***list (we cannot link to it because they have since made it an adult website), utilizing the exact code, the exact layout, merely changing the logo. Mr. Rankin had since called them on the theft, and they immediately changed it (still classifieds) and made it into a more adult brand. Going into early redevelopment the second time, Mr. Rankin saw red flags in working with SIXeed.com, a San Diego Website Design and Web Development firm, and looking back wishes he had never opened up the brand for a second launch. Not with people you cannot trust.
As you can imaging, this was another heartbreaking blow to Mr. Rankin's realizing of a dream worth chasing. The market share for online classifieds website is substantial enough to warrant having more than just Craigslist and Backpage. Nonetheless, Mr. Rankin dusts himself off from these unfortunate mishaps and plans on launching the brand again as a new concept of classifieds in April 2013. We will await this wonderful new website. Findiit Media Group, a several year old company which Mr. Rankin founded, is a new website design company in San Diego. San Diego website design and SEO marketing are both massively saturated markets, however, Findiit Media Group has taken design to and SEO marketing the next level by pushing strength in Organic SEO Marketing.
I have been watching Mr. Rankin for sometime now. I have seen the ups and downs of many small start-up companies in my days and have rarely seen such resilient character before. When you fail with an initial launch of a new business, many cannot stand going it again even one time. This will be the brands' third launch and I know he has learned the difficult way on he kinds of people you want to bring into a project.
In the development world, it is hard to find people committed to the end users, committed to the cause and committed to their clients. But Mr. Rankin has shown me and other people in the community, that he is a person to be trusted in business. When he launched his brand in 2009, I knew it was something special. Channel 10 news even covered the new website only a few weeks into its conception.
I want to see the new Findiit.org brand - a free classifieds website, succeed in round three of development. But seeing how Mr. Rankin has since launched his own website development and marketing firm, I think this is the time for him to shine. And with a brand that can sustain in the market. And since he owns his marketing company and SEO firm, I don't think there is much to prevent Mr. Rankin from making it large.
Good Luck & God Speed
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