SQ421

Here I am, browsing FT before falling asleep and I started to wonder, which was the first post and the first thread on FlyerTalk.

Anyone care to help me find it.

Gamecock

Maybe someone asking about how to score a free upgrade on their honeymoon?

Jenbel

I think Randy and his staff 'seeded' the site with stuff before it went live, so do you mean the very first, or the first non-Randy & staff post?

SQ421

I'm happy with either, Jenbel. Lets go for the first post not by Randy or Staff.

Randy Petersen

Sort of complicated because FlyerTalk has a few iterations. Because it was the very first forum and well before it's time, FlyerTalk first started in October of 1995. Then it restarted itself in May 1998. Likely there are at least two "first posts" though I can absolutely tell you for sure that the very first post with either of these start dates no longer exists as I deleted them. I do distinctly remember it though and it was "where's the chicks". In the early days of FlyerTalk, we were so far ahead of the curve that many of the "first adopters" of FlyerTalk were from the Scandinavian countries which were somewhat ahead of the U.S. in online activity in 1995/1998 and were just surfing the new World Wide Web for "conversations". And I somewhat sheepishly also hate to admit it but as i recall, the second post was also deleted as it contained profanity. Boy, did we get off to a "not so much" start.

I had looked this up years ago and know the answer but it escapes me. Perhaps we can engage Carol to unbundle the current search restrictions and look back in time and see what might be captured here. It won't be exact because when moving between some technology platforms years ago we lost some of the archived posts, but at least we can have a little fun looking at what we do have for this part of our history.

BTW, hope your night's rest was a peaceful one and you didn't toss and turn all night long wondering the answer to this!

SQ421

I managed a good 6.5 hours of shuteye last night, Randy; and am pretty chuffed to have you respond to my thread

belfordrocks

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/1-post1.html

Jenbel

Well done, and good way to find it... now waiting to see if someone will be along to explain why post 1 isn't post 1

allenh91801

It's pretty cool to be able to see a post from 1998. No storage issues?

Randy Petersen

There's two things quite interesting about this as one of the early posts on FlyerTalk:
1) The topic is about American and US Airways and merging accounts for redemption ... gee, FlyerTalk was certainly ahead of its time, by 13 years because isn't the same talk going on right now with the anticipated merger of these same two frequent flyer programs?
2) It also points out just how slow conversations were in the early days of FlyerTalk. For instance, notice that this first post was on May 5, 1998. It had a reply on May 13, 1998 but it did not get any subsequent attention until December 19, 2005 ... over seven years later. Yes, the early days of FlyerTalk were much different than today.

But the early members never complained about the lack of content, they were here to help one another and that is how it all started. A very patient group we were.

BTW, MileMonitor and MilesChick were all in-house monikers engaged to help stimulate conversation since in those days forums as we know them today were relatively rare.

As for the post numbering - keep in mind that as previously noted there were hundreds if not thousands of posts created between the actual start of FlyerTalk in 1995 and this restart in 1998. In those days, importers and filters weren't so good and as i recall few if any original posts were ported over. The first forum was a custom build (there was no actual forum software in those days), then when this "Alliance" post was made we decided to convert to out custom build to a forum platform known as UBB, then years later as we outgrew the abilities of UBB, we moved to vBulletin where it remains today. I'm thinking the custom build of our original forum software cost me about $20K in 1995 dollars to get built as i was totally convinced that i could help frequent flyers learn to share their knowledge and their like-minded friendships.

SQ421

Wow! Thanks for that, and yes, deja-vu indeed, with the talk of AA-US merger. Also gives a good glimpse of how far the industry has come since 1998, when talk of alliances was in its infancy at best, as was the concept of using miles earned on one airline to fly on another.

Jenbel

Do you remember when we switched from UBB to vBulletin? I think I remember it, but I could be recalling a version switch.

Canarsie

April 1, 2004 — and no internal links posted on FlyerTalk before that date work today unless any of them have been retroactively fixed.