Dear Passengers and Crew

 

We would like to tell you a little story… It’s a sad story with what we hope will be a happy ending…

 

In 2009 Lycos Europe closed its doors.  With a passion and drive, two people, who are husband and wife, in a desperate bid to keep the chat that they met through going, bought the chat from them and the two of them have been running the chat, with the help of an AMAZING group of volunteers ever since.  We could NEVER have done it without them.

 

TigerBear and Larholm have, in the last 11 years, fought tooth and nail to keep the chat afloat.  The chat costs us £4,500 a month and survives by one of two means.  Advertising revenue or people buying chat packages.  When people block advertising or don’t engage with the ads that interest them and decide not to purchase any packages, we can’t pay our bills. 

 

We have tried to balance this by adding more and more adverts, however as ad blocking becomes more popular, our revenue, and our ability to continue paying our bills has reached crisis point.

 

For about 18 months, the chat was just about making its own way, paying its own bills, however about 6 months ago, the revenue became too low to do this and both TigerBear and Larholm have been funding the chat themselves out of love.  In an effort to be totally transparent, it’s necessary to also let you know that both of them have had to take jobs outside of the Chat in order to pay their own bills too.  This is why so little innovation has happened over the last two years.

 

The world of chat has changed over the last 20 years since this chat first set sail from Denmark in 1997 with the UK in 2000 and all others shortly after.  With the invention of other social media, our little ship has lost passengers and momentum and we are very sad to say that unless things change drastically in the next 11 days, we will be forced to dock and drop our anchor one last time at the end of the month.

 

However, it doesn’t need to be like this!  We can save this chat together!  450 diamonds sold this and every month would guarantee the chats survival for the following month.  If you were prepared to sacrifice one packet of cigarettes a month, or a cup of coffee and instead invest in a chat package, we could stay afloat.

 

So the question is, what are you willing to do to keep this chat alive? Are you ready to let the good ship Lycos Chat sink forever or will you come and fight with us?

 

We really hope that you’ll support it and we will see you all online the good ship Lycos Chat in February.

 

Thanking you all for taking the time to read this.

 

Aly (aka TigerBear) & Brian (aka Larholm)