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Si. submitted a new article:
Editorial: is the “fansite” dead?
Quote:Let me preface this, please, by saying that I really don’t feel comfortable with with term “fan” (which I associate with “fanatic”), but I’ll accept the question in spirit in which it was intended.It’s a topic that’s cropped up a couple of times to me lately, and so I thought I’d address it publicly in case anyone else is interested. I’m keen to hear your thoughts also.
As I understand it, the suggestion is that the likes of Facebook, and to a lesser degree Twitter and Reddit, have consumed…
I have been wondering why there hasn’t been much activity going on here in the past couple months.
There used to be the same 12 or so people that seemed to know each other and posted here almost everyday but I haven’t seen any of them here since the beginning of summer or even back in spring for that matter.
I for one, don’t do social media, don’t want to be out there for family members I don’t like or people I went to high school or college with trying to approach me out of the blue or scoping my business. So that being said I enjoy sites like this.
Yeah it is a downer that none of the usual’s frequent here much like they used to but that can always change some how.
I think Si does a nice job with the looks of the site, the updates, and has good attempts for ‘involvement’ of the members.
I’m sure there are some ways like polls or contests or something out there that could get the crowd interested again.
Unless most people really only check out Bruce’s social sites instead of coming here then it may be hard to turn it around.
One of my other sites I go to is ratdog.org which is insanely busy and at times has too much pointless threads to the point of thread abuse. I know Bob Weir/Ratdog may have a lot more followers to make that happen or maybe its just that Bruce has alienated fans or turned off casual fans so that they just don’t bother with these sites. One might think that after reading concert reviews from ticketmaster/livenation…but then again a lot of those are from casual fans that never kept up with the changes and expect Range or Dead stuff.
I think once a few new threads start coming in then the rest will follow as often I check this site out and don’t go further if I don’t see anything new written though I still try to write something once in awhile and any show I attend I always share the set list in hopes that it might start a thread frenzy.I was writing a reply to a response in here, but it seems to have disappeared! The gist of it agreed with my article, and also wondered where the casual fan had gone.
Ratdog.org was held up as an example, and Dave Rosenberg does a very fine job of maintaining that. He’s done so for over a decade. I think since the Dead crowd are in tow, there will also be a thriving community there.
I certainly wasn’t knocking the use of Facebook etc as a publicity tool (although I do have a problem with “closed” groups) – I was more lamenting the loss of several community sites to it. We’ve seen plenty of evidence that this site is very strong in some areas (raising over $6,000 for charity in June and July, for instance) – it’s up to the administrator of each site to some up with something fresh. I’m open to all ideas!
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