I just read the latest announcement by the Fetlife management. Apparently they were beset with support calls due to spammers (not that I've witnessed any personally) and bad actors who defeated bans by repeatedly creating new accounts. So they decided on a radical cure... In short: prospective members who don't already know a member with the (new but limited) invite privilege will not be able to sign up. For a social network, becoming a closed community may be a recipe for extinction.
Interesting @zorglub Spam is certainly a problem - I've just spent about 10 minutes getting rid of overnight spam - and it will continue with other Mods during the day more than likely. Over the years security has been increased but still they spend time signing up and doing the confirmation emails etc Whilst on the matter - a big THANK YOU to all the members who report the spam. It makes things easier for us
Maybe. Maybe not. I saw Harley davidson's business zoon when they declared a scarcity and allotted x number of bikes to any given sized community. Look at diamonds. They are actually quite plentiful but DeBeers keeps them scarce. Just a thought. In any event I am glad I have already joined FL. Ss
That site would be better if they had a search function. Now someone will reply explaining why they think it's better that way, but I don't see it.
Really? You're going to apply a business model for material goods manufacturers to a social network whose revenue comes, in a large part, from advertisers?
Sure, why not? Honestly, if more folks were paying members over there, they could afford to concoct better defenses, but they aren't, so this is what they can afford to do to guard the gates. Is it a bad idea? Maybe.
They are killing the site. Of course they get spam joiners by the bucketload. So do we here. And have done for years. A substantial percentage of my time here as a Mod is pickiing them up and cleaning them out. They have to be done by the each, maybe 15-20 seconds a time (but, boy, do they mount up); and times have been past on CM under the previous administration when this was not being done so the site was inundated. It is pretty much under control now, though there is still occasionally a spate when Mods happen not to be online. The solution was get Mods who would do the needful, not to place intolerable barriers on all who wish to join. But FL won't do this because they want their Mods to be restricted to a private clique who are too bone lazy to do the (OK very tedious) graft involved, so they take it out on the genuine applicants (and members who want to introduce new ones). Hitherto FL has been a great site.Still is in any ways, but John Baku et al are ruining it by making it a closed shop.
I'd not spotted that but then I don't really use chat (here or there!) anyway.But just you try joining FL as a new ID (or from start if you're not a member there now) and you will soon get the message.
How strange. I would have thought that any site would encourage , more views = more revenue. Perhaps its temporary.
I was responding to a post that argued that some material goods producers (Harley Davidson, diamonds) can successfully induce an artificial scarcity as part of their product strategy. I was taking issue with applying that reasoning to a social network business that has a completely different market dynamic. #1: Currently, FetLife reigns supreme in its market just like Facebook does in the non-kink world. It is THE place to be at for kink-centric social networking and therefore, even though pretty much everybody recognizes that its user interface is antiquated and feature-poor, FL has no viable competition. But if FL makes it hard (currently plain impossible) to join for new members, it opens itself for a competitor with better features to get a foothold, at which point the users are likely to flood away to that competitor in a matter of weeks. Remember MySpace? Social networks live and die by active membership. #2: Revenue from advertisers is significant for FL. Newbies (say, during their first year or so of membership) generate way more ad clicks than jaded long time members who have seen them all and already have habits on where to buy their stuff. Advertisers surely know that. With a dearth of new blood, they will request lower rates (or if they pay based on clicks, will automatically pay less). If a competitor shows up with a much higher newbie ratio, guess where the ad dollars will be invested?
To be fair, FL's issues with new members goes much beyond spam. Their main workload is dealing with bad actors who harass other members (particularly female ones) and won't take no for an answer, creating new accounts constantly when they are banned to continue their antics, often targeting the same members who reported them. And the problem with harassment is that it is sometimes harder to deal with for the Mods: reported spam can typically be verified as such in a jiffy. Harassment is often more complicated, sometimes getting into he-said-she-said issues that take much more Mod time to sort out. When Mod are too quick on the ban trigger, the harassers retaliate by reporting (from multiple accounts too) the harassee to get them banned!
i am allow to use goggle but not to look for naughty piccys. i use it if i see a word that i don't know what it means.
[QUOTE="zorglub, post: 168149, member: 35567"FL has no viable competition.[/QUOTE] Collarspace is certainly competition for FL. Sure CS has gone through an ownership squabble that resulted in a name change and the site is slow to load at times and they also have spam-bots, but I still prefer them simply for their comprehensive search function. I think of CS as more of a fetish "hookup" site, that I have had great results with, where FL is more social and people are much more guarded and less likely to meet and play. I don't have Facebook so a social media fetish site like FL doesn't appeal much to me and others like me.
FL have a block facility. Me,bers who feel harrassed can use that. I get junk PMs there all the time.Goes with the territory.