Have bulletin boards tried to mimic social media?

[nosos]

As someone who used to use message boards a lot (as any long time poster here can attest) but hasn't for much of the last decade, I've found it really interesting to see how this platform has changed. Have they tried to mimic social media? What are the effects on message board discussion of incorporating social functionality such as liking posts? It's odd how little message boards feature in popular and academic discussions of social media despite prefiguring so much of what is now totally mainstream.

Edit to add: there was no implied critique in this, in case it reads like there was. I just found it interesting to notice how the software had changed over the years.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

The major thing in software like Urban's has been reactions - but actually those came from boards anyway originally. There are features like friends lists and walls but they're not particularly core.

All of these platforms are social media. The bigger platforms developed from imitating and customising existing systems - board software existed way before they did and they picked up on lots of features from them, as well as from other hosted networks at the time.

 

[nosos]

Is there any admin-level metrics about how often these functions are used? I guess what I was driving at is the vague sense of bloat that seems to characterise the software now. For example I still don't understand what reaction score and trophy points mean but they seem obviously inspired by mass commercial social media platforms in the sense of trying to quantify influence and popularity.

Totally take your point about the bigger platforms. I wonder how much conscious debt there was to message boards, as well as deliberate desire to hide this inspiration so it looked like 'web 2.0' was a completely new thing. Every in depth piece I've read about Zuckerberg has mentioned how much he loved AOL instant messenger but I've never read any comparable observations about the influence of message boards.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It's interesting to note that the dominant platforms are just the ones that have picked up on tech booms accidentally.

For instance, Facebook is absolutely a dominant platform solely because it introduced apps at a time when tech was allowing client-side apps to work properly. Remember Farmville requests? That was what made Facebook. At the time there were numerous competing platforms and FB was considered one of the poorer ones. Then we got huge advances in mobile tech on top of that which FB was able to exploit to cement its position.

 

[nosos]

Yes

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Is there any admin-level metrics about how often these functions are used? I guess what I was driving at is the vague sense of bloat that seems to characterise the software now. For example I still don't understand what reaction score and trophy points mean but they seem obviously inspired by mass commercial social media platforms in the sense of trying to quantify influence and popularity.

Totally take your point about the bigger platforms. I wonder how much conscious debt there was to message boards, as well as deliberate desire to hide this inspiration so it looked like 'web 2.0' was a completely new thing. Every in depth piece I've read about Zuckerberg has mentioned how much he loved AOL instant messenger but I've never read any comparable observations about the influence of message boards.

I expect Lazy Llama could dig into the database to check, but it's likely to be used a lot. OTOH it absolutely wasn't invented by any of the current social platforms. The concept has existed and been used for decades.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Oh and the complete con job of algorithmic ad sales really made a huge difference as well. But again, it's that a few platforms were around and popular at the right time, and capitalised on that.

 

[nosos]

I had thought of these really crude metrics of popularity (as opposed to something like post counts which is a bit more ambiguous) as being largely the creation of commercial social media platforms which wanted to get people hooked into ever increasing engagement. Plus they had the expertise to channel real-time data into making stickier and more persuasive interfaces. Is there more of a pre-history to this then I imagined? I guess I saw it as silicon valley firms of a particular era ("we're a brave new world beyond the dot com crash!") trying to find business models which could monetise a pre-existing social infrastructure, with uber-greedy VC funding that panicked if user growth even slightly slowed.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I had thought of these really crude metrics of popularity (as opposed to something like post counts which is a bit more ambiguous) as being largely the creation of commercial social media platforms which wanted to get people hooked into ever increasing engagement. Plus they had the expertise to channel real-time data into making stickier and more persuasive interfaces. Is there more of a pre-history to this then I imagined? I guess I saw it as silicon valley firms of a particular era ("we're a brave new world beyond the dot com crash!") trying to find business models which could monetise a pre-existing social infrastructure, with uber-greedy VC funding that panicked if user growth even slightly slowed.

Up and downvotes have been a staple of some popular platforms back into prehistory. I first remember them from Slashdot, and Reddit had a system back when it was just a link aggregation site. It's always been controversial, but I think the main difference is regarding monetary value from posts. While it always had social value to have your post get loads of upvotes, you wouldn't make a business about it, whereas based on the lies of the internet ad network there's now a significant myth that you could be paid. Nobody would have quit their job to get upvoted on slashdot.

 

[nosos]

But now you can be an influencer!

 

[Orang Utan]

Bulletins ARE social media

 

[nosos]

Well yeah of course, I mean mass contemporary commercial social media platforms.

 

[A380]

Anti social media more fucking like…

 

[editor]

Bulletins ARE social media

Well they are and they're not. They predate social media for starters, and aren't all about extracting data, monetising traffic and forcing interactions on members (at least not on these boards).

We've clearly inherited a few of the less intrusive features like emojis and 'post reactions,' which have proved very popular and makes it easier for someone to interact with posts.

A lot of the other social-media-inspired stuff that newer versions of the forum software have introduced haven't caught on at all (like following posters, for example).

The truth is that we do have to try and keep these boards as an attractive proposition to both existing members and new members otherwise we'd disappear like the vast majority of non-specialist/commercial bulletin boards.

The fact that we're still getting anything from 2,000 to around 2,500 new posts every day and around 6,000 daily post reactions is pretty damn amazing for an unfinanced, advert free board.

 

[nosos]

Totally agree. The capacity to sustain that engagement in the absence of the sticky, manipulative features of commercial social media is inspiring.

 

[Supine]

Anti social media more fucking like…

cheer up sunshine

 

[ska invita]

We've clearly inherited a few of the less intrusive features like emojis and 'post reactions,' which have proved very popular and makes it easier for someone to interact with posts.

Interestingly emoticons were invented in the early 80s on message boards, and out of necessity to avoid arguments based on misunderstanding of tone in posts

Sept. 19, 1982: Can't You Take a Joke? :-)

I think emojis are just an extension/formalisation of the emoticon

 

[nosos]

The fact I just got a 'seriously likeable' trophy due to posts on this thread lends the whole thing a meta-feel

 

[Buddy Bradley]

The fact that we're still getting anything from 2,000 to around 2,500 new posts every day and around 6,000 daily post reactions is pretty damn amazing for an unfinanced, advert free board.

Have you thought about adding a more real-time chat service like Discord to U75? I know there used to be the chat page when the boards went down, but since then services like Discord have made massive leaps in the things they can do. I can see it possibly being detrimental to the health of the boards though, if it siphoned discussion away. It would probably also require a much larger mod presence, I guess.

 

[Storm Fox]

editor I'm fairly new here, and you and the team run a great forum and doing it without ads is just amazing. There are great people on here, and I think your level of moderation is pretty spot on, especially give the number of posts.
I've been on forums that have just died, or over-moderated, where mods will delete a bunch of posts even if the thread goes slightly off topic or insanely complex rules and governance.

 

[editor]

Have you thought about adding a more real-time chat service like Discord to U75? I know there used to be the chat page when the boards went down, but since then services like Discord have made massive leaps in the things they can do. I can see it possibly being detrimental to the health of the boards though, if it siphoned discussion away. It would probably also require a much larger mod presence, I guess.

We've tried real time chat rooms in different flavours in the past but they've never really caught on and as you say often need a lot more hands on moderation.

 

[jeff_leigh]

Bulletins ARE social media

These forums are the only social media I use