posted on March 7, 2000 01:35:39 PM new
Hmmmm.......the only visitors to this forum seem to be lost tourists looking for the AW freeway. Is there anybody on AW that uses Auctions.Com? Or am I all by myself? Even Neomax has been mysteriously quiet......
Not even any blue and green banners for AC lately......
Oh well, wandering back out into the shark tank.....
I just checked the daily report and I'm happy to report to you that even without the banners running here, people sign up daily at auctions.com saying they heard about us on auctionwatch.
I think one of the real things that is overlooked in terms of message boards is the rate of participation.
On popular sites, the ratio of visitors to message posters can easily be counted in the hundreds to one. Lurkers, those who read and follow anonymously, constitute a smaller number but still outnumber posters by a factor of as much as ten to one.
The only point is that like it is posited on the x-files we are not alone ... oops, isn't that "the truth is out there."
posted on March 8, 2000 11:45:44 AM new
Hmmm, well that brings me to another question that I was going to ask.....Why did the Hubs disappear in the transition from AU to AC and will they ever be back in any form? The uniqueness of the site has disappeared and there's not much to distiguish AC from the rest of the auction crowd. I kind of enjoyed the articles and whatnot even though the content didn't change very often.
I know that there are legal issues to having chat boards and that sort of thing, but perhaps a help board, at the least, should be considered. Some stuff is very difficult to navigate/find on the site and people might be more comfortable with poking their heads into a chat to find the answer rather than waiting for an e-mail or slogging through the FAQ's.
posted on March 8, 2000 12:28:52 PM new
Oh and something else I just thought of.....Why don't the showcase auctions show on the main page? Most people aren't going to click on the link to look, but if a few of the auctions cycled through on the main page it might increase the hits on those auctions.
First, regarding content, we're working on some additional editorial content for the site. The exact form it will take is to be determined.
Regarding an onsite message board; I've been beating that drum consistently for some time. We had one early on but it was based on the ichat software and quite combersome. My guess is this will eventually come to pass.
I agree we should have some "example" showcase auctions on the front page along with the click-through. They were removed from the front page as an integral part because the list was getting long and we were being severly criticized for being among the slowest sites to load. (Right now, our front page is around 35kb. In those days, it was not uncommon for the front page to contain 140kb and take over a minute to load at 28.8.
posted on March 8, 2000 03:33:30 PM new
Well, I know that AC loads a lot faster than it used to and that is greatly appreciated. The whole site is speedy, even at home with my 26k connection. I used to click cancel while the front page was loading so I wouldn't have to wait. But other sites manage a few showcases on the front page with out impacting load time too much. Maybe some sort of script that pulls 4 auctions out of the showcase database at random and displays it. But I know it can't be that simple.
... oops, isn't that "the truth is out there."