LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL FANS

Post by Andy Jones

KopTalk is a Liverpool FC website that was released by Duncan Oldham and Colin Seaman back in 1999. At the time there was only a handful of LFC forums in existence and the official club internet site had but to start.

Seaman left the web site shortly afterwards to pursue a profitable profession as a world wide web designer, but KopTalk at first proved to be a well-liked forum, though viewpoint has usually been divided as to whether or not this was due mostly to the talents of the individuals who produced the web site, or was rather down to the wit, intelligence and expertise of the site’s early members.

From the outset, KopTalk was a seriously commercialised website that specialised in transfer gossip. This method owed a enormous financial debt to the notorious Brian Bentley of the Group Discuss internet site, who had pioneered a equivalent style in the course of the mid-1990s.

Duncan Oldham very swiftly launched numerous paid-for “services” on KopTalk, all of which were based on the guarantee of having accessibility to “insider” details about what was going on behind the scenes at Liverpool Football Club. Inside a 12 months of KopTalk’s launch these included premium-charge telephone data lines, a “deluxe” electronic mail service and a “VIP” forum.

As a end result, KopTalk has constantly been the topic of criticism inside of the broader on the internet LFC fan local community. Within a couple of weeks of the forum’s launch, it was currently currently being mockingly referred to by some individuals as “Kraptalk”. His critics have claimed that Duncan Oldham is inspired by a want to make funds instead than a heartfelt really like for the football club and have accused him of fabricating transfer gossip for this cause, though Oldham himself has usually refuted this sort of claims.

At the end of 2001, a satirical website known as Kraptalk was released by Liverpool fans with the aim of poking exciting at the strategies Duncan Oldham employed to drum up interest in KopTalk.

Above the years, a number of other Liverpool community forums have been produced as a end result of a mass exodus of former KopTalk members who made a decision to leave the internet site. These contain YNWA, TalkLFC, Est1892 and SixCrazyMinutes.

Early in 2006, the KopTalk Uncovered weblog was launched by involved Liverpool fans, who desired to hold Duncan Oldham’s behaviour up to public scrutiny. It has since amassed much more than one.6 million hits and above 800 content articles. The web site has often extended an open invitation to Duncan Oldham for him to come onto the blog and defend himself from the various accusations levelled at him, but Oldham has thus far failed to do so.

About the Writer

A lifelong Liverpool fan who spends more time on LFC community forums than is most likely healthful.