Hello everyone. I am so glad to have found your forum, because when it comes to making connections with other people online, it all started with bulletin boards and forums. The 'big tents' they created were amazing places where people met, shared ideas, planned events, shared technical information about their cars, smart cars.
The smart car was a new car marque that came about roughly at the the turn of the century and the community formed on a vBulletin forum, long before social media like Facebook became mainstream. I loved the cars, and I loved the community - it was a fabulous place to be and the forum was just electric.
Facebook Groups started in, if my memory serves me correctly, around 2011, and within only four to six weeks the forums collapsed. It wasn't even a gradual decline as it was so rapid. That shocked me initially, but that shock was replaced by sadness and a feeling of grief, for the big tent had atomised into some thirty or so different groups for smart cars, each keeping their members in a silo, with no communication and a sense of hostility between them. Some FB groups are toxic, but most are managed by those who haven't a clue what they are doing. It's not surprising it all fell apart. I never, really, got over it.
These days I drive a Mini, and run a Mini Car group on Facebook where I find myself constantly battling algorithms and advertising. It's very difficult to get people to engage. Facebook seems to be getting worse by the month and, looking at the horizon, I see trouble ahead. The user experience is degrading to the point that people are beginning to turn away from it, and that doesn't auger well for the future.
I care about these car communities, because they are part of my identity and my past. I want to take my group back onto a forum/bb platform but it has to be done properly or it'll all go wrong. It is here that I hope to learn how to do this: setting up a forum is the easy part - it's the strategy and getting people to actually move across that are the tricky bits! I hope to learn from you all and, I hope, make friends along the way. My name is David, and I so look forward to getting to know you all in the months and years ahead.
The smart car was a new car marque that came about roughly at the the turn of the century and the community formed on a vBulletin forum, long before social media like Facebook became mainstream. I loved the cars, and I loved the community - it was a fabulous place to be and the forum was just electric.
Facebook Groups started in, if my memory serves me correctly, around 2011, and within only four to six weeks the forums collapsed. It wasn't even a gradual decline as it was so rapid. That shocked me initially, but that shock was replaced by sadness and a feeling of grief, for the big tent had atomised into some thirty or so different groups for smart cars, each keeping their members in a silo, with no communication and a sense of hostility between them. Some FB groups are toxic, but most are managed by those who haven't a clue what they are doing. It's not surprising it all fell apart. I never, really, got over it.
These days I drive a Mini, and run a Mini Car group on Facebook where I find myself constantly battling algorithms and advertising. It's very difficult to get people to engage. Facebook seems to be getting worse by the month and, looking at the horizon, I see trouble ahead. The user experience is degrading to the point that people are beginning to turn away from it, and that doesn't auger well for the future.
I care about these car communities, because they are part of my identity and my past. I want to take my group back onto a forum/bb platform but it has to be done properly or it'll all go wrong. It is here that I hope to learn how to do this: setting up a forum is the easy part - it's the strategy and getting people to actually move across that are the tricky bits! I hope to learn from you all and, I hope, make friends along the way. My name is David, and I so look forward to getting to know you all in the months and years ahead.
