Originally Posted by
sbm12
I believe this is a delusional view of what is being posted in the forum.
Most recently there is a discussion of Facebook ad targeting (nothing to do with bloggers)
This discussion (about The Points Guy blog's facebook ads) was one of the most relevant, interesting and informative that I've seen ANYwhere on FT in a while. Digital advertising is a relatively new and constantly innovating phenomenon. The notion that many P&M bloggers are sponsored content providers, and the extent to which they are, was one of the reasons for starting the forum: who can you REALLY trust in the space, and on which issues are providers bought and paid for by affiliates, vendors, etc? What content is content for its own sake and what content is actually secretly (or not-so-secretly) an ad? In a world of sponsored content advertising, what could be more helpful in separating a good deal from an ad than that analysis?
And particularly since TPG is now literally owned by a credit card affiliate, learning how finely (or in TPG's case broadly) P&M bloggers/CC affiliate companies tune their digital ad buys is also interesting.
Others may not be interested in those things...I sure am, being all thought leadery and whatnot...but it certainly is substantive discussion of reliability. @:-)
and baseless speculation on why one blogger decided to change his travel plans, including discussion of his boyfriend's hometown. If that qualifies as substantive then FT has dropped even further than I thought.
The One Mile at a Time blog has no fewer than 5 posts that make reference to Lucky's 'horrible' event that led to a major change in plans. So people are discussing the content of those posts. Which is another reason the forum was created in the first place: to discuss the content of points and miles content providers.
So put back in context, both of your examples really ARE substantive analysis of external points and miles resource post content, style, logistics and reliability. In these cases content as well as reliability.