Originally Posted by
ClueByFour
I asked this in a previous post and I feel compelled to ask again: what is gained by adding another 20 or 30 smilies? Or avatars? The Flyertalk interface, particularly now that the search functions have been improved, is not broken from a GUI standpoint.
This is scarily reminiscent of the dot-com bubble stuff from the late 1990s: it's the content people want. The presentation is just that. The "online experience" is meaningless next to the content.
Content is still king, but that mantra was so 5 years ago; today it's also about the overall "
user experience". As people become more web-savvy they want to connect with others and express themselves in as many ways as they can.
Self-selected avatars are:
- a quick, effective method to communicate bio info about a user
- who they are,
- where they are coming from,
- are they young/old,
- male/female,
- so many messages can be conveyed with an image.
For me a quick look at an avatar will give me a lot of information that will help me respond to a post. I remember once finding myself wanting to give a snarky answer to someone asking what I thought was an odd security question about a hotel's location. When the person PM'd me and noted they were female, their question made a lot more sense and I felt stupid assuming they were male.
Again, what's been suggested is not music, videos, backgounds... just an
OPTIONAL avatar image less than 1" x 2" in the profile box to the left of each post!!! and within the posts some fresh & updated smilies reflecting some of
today's buzzwords as well as some travel specific ones.
I beg to differ with
ClueByFour that the FT search function has been improved, but your thinking it is and wanting a pure BB gives me some insight into where you are coming from.
If you think presentation is "just that" and the "'online experience' is meaningless next to the content":
- Why is one of the most popular features on MySpace the ability to customize your own page, background, photos?
- Consider the face in Facebook and it's success.... (even among FlyerTalkers who are increasingly using it for "back-channel" communications and information sharing in ways that FlyerTalk currently can never do.)
- Why have the ability to change fonts, even colors of fonts?
- Why even bother with smilies?
I'm asking you to consider the evolution of FlyerTalk, baby steps here, but giving users some more visual
options.
I'm of the opinion that we can add a few visual features and user customization of how they express themselves while still keeping the focus on quality discussion of miles and points.
It's not an either or situation. We can and deserve both good content and a modern user experience.
Originally Posted by
ClueByFour
I'm not a vbb expert, but I'm assuming that (as with most things), the more customization that's allowed on the server side=more CPU and resource utilization for the host. If I'm Randly (or Internet Brands, really), I'm asking myself if I'm losing valuable content contributors or eyeballs who click-thru on ads because I don't have every whizbang feature in the software turned on. I'm betting their answer is probably "no."
The content and experience should drive the technology, not the other way around. I'll also point out that we're asking for non-moving/animated items here, have you seen how much video is streaming on websites today? The huge new ads that IB has implemented to the right and top of this post take up far more bandwidth/cpu/resources than any static similie or avatar will.
If I were IB (or any business), I'd look ahead. I'd be very worried about the quality content contributors who have a growing number of options to discuss miles & points. Even the much laughed at TripAdvisor is getting better and has a much larger user base. The bar is being raised everyday on other sites and FT should not stifle it's own improvement because a few are afraid of change.