User of the Day - 6 year & 60 post user goes ballistic!

tbh I feel like you came across as slightly needesly antagonistic there with "FerrariChat, have you heard of it?"

his reaction was a tad excessive though

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Can you reset my password Rob?

 

I think it’s called Ferrari (something)….

 

Rob famously offers customer service out of a Clint Eastwood movie. No BS here. I suspect the guy was old and didn’t realise a mobile browser meant like a website. And I guess if I had to deal with anonymous customers for years I’d be as grouchy as Rob was.

Still, I would not have banned Fabio from the Maranello forum but that’s another thing.

Out of interest how are the YOY figures for Fchat? I have been here for more than 10 happy years and don’t find it dead but also wonder how much is also going on diversely and less usefully on video comments and social media

 

You really have the market cornered tbh, out of all of all of the car forums I’ve been on for over a decade this is by far relatively the most busy to what it was in the glory days of message boards

 

The quality of the forum comes down to the intelligent governance of the forum. Pragmatic and practical application of policing the trolls and spam as Rob said above and also managed content. I’ve learned a lot here. Even understanding that it’s not just some computer on the other end of your communication, it’s actually people.


I have a question, what is killing forums and forum traffic?

 

@rob lay if the Silver/Gold forums are removed from the metrics, can you share the growth and/or stats related to the core 'Ferrari' content?

 

It seems like a P&R threads are slowly becoming the majority of the ‘new posts’ page. I would imagine thats keeping the traffic pretty healthy.

 

At least the trash is cordoned off, and for the most part stays out of the useful and actual car talk.

 

Silver (and mostly P&R) feels like the lion's share of new posting, and the velocity of posting there eclipses all the other forums. (But it's just a guess on my part)

 

I think there were two big groups of people on the forums decades ago when I joined and used them (not just Fchat btw). There was a group that mainly used it for the socializing and meetups and then another group that more on the DIY technical aspect and troubleshooting/fixing and modifying their cars and sharing that knowledge to help reach their goals.

The first group probably left mostly to IG or Tiktok since that is more about the social aspect. The forums I use elsewhere and here on Fchat I see a lot of technical, DIY, parts finding, modifying, PPI info, etc content. That's the stuff I always enjoyed and why I'm still here and on other forums. Some of that went onto YouTube as well as it can be easier to show some of those things on video rather than posts.

 

Vertical Scope bought a Sea Ray forum (Clubsearay.com) last year and they really struggled to move the site to their web platform. Historical posts and images were lost as well as a lot of the DIY topics which are really vital to boat owners. Their search engine and navigation is exponentially worse than Fchat.

It seems that the whole idea behind Vertical Scope was to push ads. The more forums.....the more ads they sold. They have one Canadian Admin assigned to the CSR site which who is responsible for a lot of other sites. As a result.....performance issues and bad behavior go unchecked. As a direct result interactions and postings are down as well as paid memberships.

It just seems Vertical Scope is a forum rollup that sells ads for as long as they can. Their cost profile is somewhat contained since every acquisition is moved on to their software and ad engine.

Based on the interaction between some CSR members and Vertical Scope.......they don't seem to be interested in selling anything they have even if it is not performing.

 

Thanks Rob for the honesty.

as someone in another part of media, I have no idea what’s going to happen in 10 years. For me Fchat was about Ferrari owners and enthusiasts exchanging knowledge in a digestible and accessible format.

To take an example I know well, let’s say @tazandjan had created videos instead of responding on Fchat. I would never have watched them for information. And would know a fraction of what I do, about our cars.

Let’s say AI could digest and regurgitate that video content, so I would know for example that post a certain serial number, 575s had a different steering and shock ECU and FHP was less important for those.

I’d have that knowledge in a second, but no knowledge of the community gained through Fchat.

the problem is new generations will just be served the knowledge, and not make the communities. I think I already see it happening here.

 

Did Facebook Kill The Car Forum? - Hagerty Media

 

What is Facebook......never been on it, Instagram, Twitter or TicTok? Now get off my lawn.