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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 08-31-2022

World’s Top RC Hobby Distributor Launches Innovative Communities on OwnTheCrowd Platform

RCNation.com Looks to Beat Facebook for Air and Surface RC Hobbies

Denver, CO: Today, Horizon Hobby (HorizonHobby.com) became the first client to launch product-based communities on the OwnTheCrowd social media platform. RCNation.com will serve both the radio control air and surface segments, each with its own standalone site. The OwnTheCrowd platform that powers both communities looks to disrupt the lock Facebook and old school forums have had on the industry over the past two decades. Hobbyists who want to join simply visit RCNation.com and navigate to either the air or the surface (cars and boats) side.

Horizon vetted a number of solutions before landing on OwnTheCrowd. According to Horizon’s head of marketing, Steve Petrotto, “OwnTheCrowd has the absolute best platform for enabling both social engagement and knowledge preservation. When members of our communities contribute their valuable experience and knowledge online, we don’t want it to get buried in a week by the next raft of posts. With OwnTheCrowd’s technology, everything posted on the site gets cataloged so others can find specific information about specific products in just a couple of clicks.”

Horizon was able to customize its platform in a matter of weeks using a self-serve administration console. Organizing their communities by products on the left side and topic areas on the right, Horizon gives its community members capabilities not found on Facebook or conventional forums. In addition, the platform offers unique post types, like chaptered progress or build stories, which link individually themed chapters to a single story. These are incredibly useful for keeping thematic content connected and accessible over time. In addition, comments are organized by chapter, which eliminates the disjointed experience on threaded forum posts. The platform has a familiar “feed” running through the center of the screen, but that feed can be instantly filtered to the user’s liking. Both the air and surface sites will also feature an interactive events calendar, a club area, instant messaging, foreign language translation, video and image posting and virtually all of the features that users have grown used to on social media sites.

For Horizon, the prospect of operating its own community brings immediate benefits. “Our marketing team cannot keep up with the proliferation of Facebook Groups, which splinter our audience and make it difficult to reach our target audience,” said Petrotto. If we can provide a nearly identical experience on our own platform (without politics and lunch plate pictures), we will be able to more effectively communicate with our customers unhindered by Facebook’s algorithms.”

Horizon plans to launch a third community for model railroad enthusiasts in the coming months.

About OwnTheCrowd.com: OwnTheCrowd is a collaborative vision of digital entrepreneurs, including Michael Kranitz, who co-founded what became the largest online RC community in 2006, the first fully immersive digital RC magazine (RCPilot) in 2011 and RCFlightDeck, the first full service event management platform for the RC community in 2012 (later evolved into Eventsquid.events.