I've spent 20 years on FlyerTalk
May 30, 2018, 5:38 am
#16
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: BOS, MHT
Programs: AA ltg, B6, DL, UA, AS, SPG/Marriott Plt, HH, Hyatt
Posts: 10,052
Hmmm, let’s s see...
Nov 2002. That’s 16 years for me. In retrospect that’s a long time, but I still know I was certainly no founding member or early sign up. So cheers to those of you who were!
I have less posts than an evangelist right now but more words per post than anyone. Lol
I have been basted for this trait and some even think my name was made because the posts are “marathon” in length.
The real story is that I joined the day after running the NYC Marathon in that year and so I was on a “runner’s high” when I signed up, all excited that this forum would be everything folks like Gary steiger said it would be. I met Gary and others when using a different handle I had made at a smaller forum called frequent flier forum, which I had joined in I think 2000-2001. Gary, as some know, made like the first real miles and points web site external to any forum like FT that talked about deals and tips, and he was good at presenting them. Best part is he never asked for money for it and it wasn’t a blog so it didn’t ruin deals and promos by over exposure masked as helping and sharing while making bank on links to CCs. If anything, Gary's motto seemed to be all about karma, teaching others how to share deals without blowing them up, and being good to others in such circles as these so it would come back to you. Way the opposite of what many of today's blogs do (despite what they claim). So in a way Gary was a mentor to me and to many of us, but the blogs of today are all these newbies have to go by now, so things have changed.
Sadly, it was controversial claims and comments such as that just now stab at bloggers that made me known in here to the newer set. Oh I shared ideas and details about things that people like me wanted to know, and many like me did MS (manufactured Spend), but As I posted my opinions or lengthy posts chok full of details and information, I also always seemed to find ‘the guy who wanted to start an internet fight.’
As MS began to morph away from the greatness it once was (much of it was found deep in this forum back in the day) and as more and more bloggings and bickerings started to take over whenever I posted, I began to come here less and less.
Why, one such bickering happened just last month on the thread about the lady on Delta who got fined for bringing an apple into the country!
Nevertheless, I still post here and there. And the reason is because FT is a great resource to which we can all add and from which we can all gain, and so, I have faith even still that there are many good flyer souls amoung us willing to share tips and talk about deals and discuss travel.
I somehow continue to imagine that the good will and does outweigh the negative. After all, even when your domestic middle seat delayed connecting flight that’s stuck due to weather and equipment failure and the loud dude next to you spills his hit coffee on your best business shirt, you still eventually get to where you are going and in so doing, you meet new people and visit new places.
I think that’s what FT is supposed to be about.
MM
Nov 2002. That’s 16 years for me. In retrospect that’s a long time, but I still know I was certainly no founding member or early sign up. So cheers to those of you who were!
I have less posts than an evangelist right now but more words per post than anyone. Lol
I have been basted for this trait and some even think my name was made because the posts are “marathon” in length.
The real story is that I joined the day after running the NYC Marathon in that year and so I was on a “runner’s high” when I signed up, all excited that this forum would be everything folks like Gary steiger said it would be. I met Gary and others when using a different handle I had made at a smaller forum called frequent flier forum, which I had joined in I think 2000-2001. Gary, as some know, made like the first real miles and points web site external to any forum like FT that talked about deals and tips, and he was good at presenting them. Best part is he never asked for money for it and it wasn’t a blog so it didn’t ruin deals and promos by over exposure masked as helping and sharing while making bank on links to CCs. If anything, Gary's motto seemed to be all about karma, teaching others how to share deals without blowing them up, and being good to others in such circles as these so it would come back to you. Way the opposite of what many of today's blogs do (despite what they claim). So in a way Gary was a mentor to me and to many of us, but the blogs of today are all these newbies have to go by now, so things have changed.
Sadly, it was controversial claims and comments such as that just now stab at bloggers that made me known in here to the newer set. Oh I shared ideas and details about things that people like me wanted to know, and many like me did MS (manufactured Spend), but As I posted my opinions or lengthy posts chok full of details and information, I also always seemed to find ‘the guy who wanted to start an internet fight.’
As MS began to morph away from the greatness it once was (much of it was found deep in this forum back in the day) and as more and more bloggings and bickerings started to take over whenever I posted, I began to come here less and less.
Why, one such bickering happened just last month on the thread about the lady on Delta who got fined for bringing an apple into the country!
Nevertheless, I still post here and there. And the reason is because FT is a great resource to which we can all add and from which we can all gain, and so, I have faith even still that there are many good flyer souls amoung us willing to share tips and talk about deals and discuss travel.
I somehow continue to imagine that the good will and does outweigh the negative. After all, even when your domestic middle seat delayed connecting flight that’s stuck due to weather and equipment failure and the loud dude next to you spills his hit coffee on your best business shirt, you still eventually get to where you are going and in so doing, you meet new people and visit new places.
I think that’s what FT is supposed to be about.
MMLast edited by Marathon Man; May 30, 2018 at 5:46 am Reason: typo
May 31, 2018, 3:23 am
#19
Join Date: May 2003
Location: EDI
Programs: KL, BD, BA, CO
Posts: 358
Edinburgh Control Tower
15 years active, prob 17 incl lurking! But my favourite moment was when a bunch of Edinburgh based FT'ers arranged for a special behind the scenes tour of Edinburgh's new air traffic control tower. That was such a privilege and I still sometimes talk to the non-privileged as to what it was like. 2nd favourite was getting into unexpected but friendly constructive dialogue with Continental's CEO, Gordon Bethune, in the late 90s over a (minor) problem I encountered and somehow he stepped in via his support staff... charming gentleman and I was grateful and humbled by his intervention.
Jun 7, 2018, 1:47 pm
#22
Join Date: May 1998
Posts: 6,790
It really was a small group back then, and fun (still is). I remember when Koko got his current handle at the PiP, and Rudi who played gently with Matt in a tennis match for a (very rare in those days) one-way upgrade. Rudi was another of the seasoned experts who helped us neophytes learn the ropes. I miss some of the old-timers who were so helpful (like PremEx and Rudi to name just two) and who were also great fun to read (Catman, Merry, baobab) or just to be with (goalie, auh2o, Wingless, SanDiego1K, and SkiAdcock to name a few), and special friends like sggolf, Daydream, and essxjay. I know I'm omitting some folks accidentally (getting older, you know) and to them I apologize.
It was an interesting 20 years; here's to the next 20!
It was an interesting 20 years; here's to the next 20!
Sep 15, 2018, 3:23 pm
#25
Original Member
Join Date: May 1998
Location: CH-3823 Wengen Switzerland
Programs: miles&more, MileagePlus
Posts: 27,041
Randy Petersen Founder of FlyerTalk posted on Sep 28 0015
Really, there are no bad memories. FlyerTalk has been a tremendous ride and there's been some days better than others (the server problems from time to time) but I could do it all again, exactly the way it happened.
So here goes. The original FlyerTalk concept of a bulletin board for frequent flyers was launched on Sept. 22, 1995 with the formal launch of WebFlyer.com. At that time, while InsideFlyer had been publishing frequent flyer information online since 1987 with NewsNet and CompuServe, and we were then working on a launch as the official frequent flyer portal for AOL, a relative newcomer in the business at that time (that was launched on December 7, 1995). Anyway, the original WebFlyer.com launch was seen as the online content for InsideFlyer magazine since at that time we really had no ideas of how and why to publish the entire magazine online, etc.
The concept of FlyerTalk was seen as a way for readers of InsideFlyer to share additional comments and feedback on the topic. So it was launched as a part of WebFlyer.com. In the early part of 1995, the commercial World Wide Web was still very much unknown (most of the attention still to Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe). We saw a small number of chat boards out there and thought it might be a good platform to extend InsideFlyer reader interaction. We could not find any reasonable commercial software at the time so commissioned a Web development company called Netgrafix to custom build the code and application for our bulletin board. It cost me some money but we got it done and it was included in the original WebFlyer.com, though interestingly enough, because of the low level interest in such a thing at the time we did not even feature it.
It was pretty slow starting and it took about two months before we saw any activity at all (let's remember, there was not a whole lot of you all out there in 1995....). I'm thinking perhaps 3-4 posts a day (these days we do that every minute of day, 24 hours a day). In the third month, we started to notice an interesting increase in posts - problem posts. In no time at all, we were still getting 3-4 posts a day about frequent flyer topics, but 10-15 a day and then 20-30 a day from people we did not know looking to know where the "party" was and if there were any "chicks" who wanted to talk. Almost all these types of posts came from people in the Scandinavian countries. Looking back, we had tried too hard to make search terms like "chat" the prominent feature and that was the buzz word for looking for girls. After about 5-6 weeks of daily editing out a majority of posts because of content and profanity, my team leader at the time asked me please to pull the plug, my grand idea to extend InsideFlyer and reader interaction was clearly a failure. So I did. At the time, i'm thinking i had a grand total of 112 good posts.
The years go by and WebFlyer is doing real good as it was the first and at the time only frequent flyer portal (remember that word?). Anyway in the back of my mind, i really hated to not have something work, so i continued on my own to research applications for a new bulletin board that could be commercially available (i just could not see spending the kind of money required to build something we knew absolutely about) and noticed that there was a building buzz about chat boards. I did my research and decided upon UBB and despite protests from my InterActive team that was managing the AOL portal we had going, to restart FlyerTalk, again under the umbrella of WebFlyer.com
So, the readers of InsideFlyer were again invited to participate in a new bulletin board designed to help members hare experiences and tips with other readers of the magazine. This time we got lucky and it took right off on May 5, 1998. After 6 months we noticed that a few of the new posters were not subscribers to InsideFlyer and I decided to gamble and welcome them as well. From that point forward, growth has been organic. We've not spent a single dollar toward marketing the Web site and today it ranks among the top, if not the top bulletin board in the world for number of posts and activity on the topic of travel and certainly the hub for frequent flyers around the globe.
I have often joked and it actually is true that one of the major factors in launching the concept was that even back in those days, i was having trouble answering the many letters (yes, actually physical letters) and faxes from my readers asking for advice for their miles and points. FlyerTalk was a concept that allowed me to use the knowledge of my readers who had followed my advice to share with others. Any while with the sheer traffic of FlyerTalk, only a percentage of todays members are readers of InsideFlyer, I think it fair to say that many owe thanks to the magazine.
Along the way there have been several interesting historical aspects, such as in July 2001 that FlyerTalk acquired another Web bulletin board called Flyers' Places. This was a popular bulletin board started by a member of FlyerTalk - Dorian - who thought that there should be a sort of Zagats; guide to restaurants from a frequent flyers perspective and today much of the success of Travel&Dining on FlyerTalk can be traced back to Dorian.
We've also had the develop of several personalities on FT, such as Doc who in the early years showed a tremendous propensity for posting and today still has more than 45,000 posts. And of course the evolution of a member-elected TalkBoard who first presidency was cigarman and then the overwhelming generosity of our volunteer moderators. We actually had others involved representing our members earlier than that. Who could forget the contributions of appointees svpii, Punki and Rudi. Svpii was actually the first president in a non-member elected capacity and Punki even contributed in that role for a short period. And who could forget the very first public "Do" - Party in Paradise in Hawaii.
One of the most important dates in FlyerTalk history is 11/4/1999. On that date, Catman, NJDavid and Rudi presented me with the official URL for FlyerTalk.com and we moved away from the shadow of WebFlyer.com (inside where it was hosted) and made an independent name for itself. I can easily say that these three members - Catman, NJDavid and Rudi were very, very important in the first two years of FlyerTalk - and still are important to me today.
Yes, i can go on and on but will simply shut up for now and if you've got any additional questions not yet answered or addressed, please post and i'll do what i can to entertain you even more.... HA!
I think our first full year had 102,000 posts total and today we're closing in on 5 million.
Really, there are no bad memories. FlyerTalk has been a tremendous ride and there's been some days better than others (the server problems from time to time) but I could do it all again, exactly the way it happened.
So here goes. The original FlyerTalk concept of a bulletin board for frequent flyers was launched on Sept. 22, 1995 with the formal launch of WebFlyer.com. At that time, while InsideFlyer had been publishing frequent flyer information online since 1987 with NewsNet and CompuServe, and we were then working on a launch as the official frequent flyer portal for AOL, a relative newcomer in the business at that time (that was launched on December 7, 1995). Anyway, the original WebFlyer.com launch was seen as the online content for InsideFlyer magazine since at that time we really had no ideas of how and why to publish the entire magazine online, etc.
The concept of FlyerTalk was seen as a way for readers of InsideFlyer to share additional comments and feedback on the topic. So it was launched as a part of WebFlyer.com. In the early part of 1995, the commercial World Wide Web was still very much unknown (most of the attention still to Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe). We saw a small number of chat boards out there and thought it might be a good platform to extend InsideFlyer reader interaction. We could not find any reasonable commercial software at the time so commissioned a Web development company called Netgrafix to custom build the code and application for our bulletin board. It cost me some money but we got it done and it was included in the original WebFlyer.com, though interestingly enough, because of the low level interest in such a thing at the time we did not even feature it.
It was pretty slow starting and it took about two months before we saw any activity at all (let's remember, there was not a whole lot of you all out there in 1995....). I'm thinking perhaps 3-4 posts a day (these days we do that every minute of day, 24 hours a day). In the third month, we started to notice an interesting increase in posts - problem posts. In no time at all, we were still getting 3-4 posts a day about frequent flyer topics, but 10-15 a day and then 20-30 a day from people we did not know looking to know where the "party" was and if there were any "chicks" who wanted to talk. Almost all these types of posts came from people in the Scandinavian countries. Looking back, we had tried too hard to make search terms like "chat" the prominent feature and that was the buzz word for looking for girls. After about 5-6 weeks of daily editing out a majority of posts because of content and profanity, my team leader at the time asked me please to pull the plug, my grand idea to extend InsideFlyer and reader interaction was clearly a failure. So I did. At the time, i'm thinking i had a grand total of 112 good posts.
The years go by and WebFlyer is doing real good as it was the first and at the time only frequent flyer portal (remember that word?). Anyway in the back of my mind, i really hated to not have something work, so i continued on my own to research applications for a new bulletin board that could be commercially available (i just could not see spending the kind of money required to build something we knew absolutely about) and noticed that there was a building buzz about chat boards. I did my research and decided upon UBB and despite protests from my InterActive team that was managing the AOL portal we had going, to restart FlyerTalk, again under the umbrella of WebFlyer.com
So, the readers of InsideFlyer were again invited to participate in a new bulletin board designed to help members hare experiences and tips with other readers of the magazine. This time we got lucky and it took right off on May 5, 1998. After 6 months we noticed that a few of the new posters were not subscribers to InsideFlyer and I decided to gamble and welcome them as well. From that point forward, growth has been organic. We've not spent a single dollar toward marketing the Web site and today it ranks among the top, if not the top bulletin board in the world for number of posts and activity on the topic of travel and certainly the hub for frequent flyers around the globe.
I have often joked and it actually is true that one of the major factors in launching the concept was that even back in those days, i was having trouble answering the many letters (yes, actually physical letters) and faxes from my readers asking for advice for their miles and points. FlyerTalk was a concept that allowed me to use the knowledge of my readers who had followed my advice to share with others. Any while with the sheer traffic of FlyerTalk, only a percentage of todays members are readers of InsideFlyer, I think it fair to say that many owe thanks to the magazine.
Along the way there have been several interesting historical aspects, such as in July 2001 that FlyerTalk acquired another Web bulletin board called Flyers' Places. This was a popular bulletin board started by a member of FlyerTalk - Dorian - who thought that there should be a sort of Zagats; guide to restaurants from a frequent flyers perspective and today much of the success of Travel&Dining on FlyerTalk can be traced back to Dorian.
We've also had the develop of several personalities on FT, such as Doc who in the early years showed a tremendous propensity for posting and today still has more than 45,000 posts. And of course the evolution of a member-elected TalkBoard who first presidency was cigarman and then the overwhelming generosity of our volunteer moderators. We actually had others involved representing our members earlier than that. Who could forget the contributions of appointees svpii, Punki and Rudi. Svpii was actually the first president in a non-member elected capacity and Punki even contributed in that role for a short period. And who could forget the very first public "Do" - Party in Paradise in Hawaii.
One of the most important dates in FlyerTalk history is 11/4/1999. On that date, Catman, NJDavid and Rudi presented me with the official URL for FlyerTalk.com and we moved away from the shadow of WebFlyer.com (inside where it was hosted) and made an independent name for itself. I can easily say that these three members - Catman, NJDavid and Rudi were very, very important in the first two years of FlyerTalk - and still are important to me today.
Yes, i can go on and on but will simply shut up for now and if you've got any additional questions not yet answered or addressed, please post and i'll do what i can to entertain you even more.... HA!
I think our first full year had 102,000 posts total and today we're closing in on 5 million.
Oct 9, 2018, 2:35 pm
#26
Original Member
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Canada
Programs: AC SE 2MM, HH Dd, SPG; IC Pl/A; AA; DL
Posts: 14,321
Congrats Koko and Rudi and others who were there at or near the beginning. It has been a great ride and some GREAT moments thanks to the likes of folks like Rudi who is such a gracious host. Also many get togethers on different continents both informal and "formal"--thanks to all the organizers again.
Haven't seen many of you in the last few years but hope we can have reunions soon!^
Haven't seen many of you in the last few years but hope we can have reunions soon!^
Oct 9, 2018, 5:05 pm
#27
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: Over the Bay Bridge, CA
Programs: Jumbo mas
Posts: 38,628
Oct 9, 2018, 6:20 pm
#28
Original Member, Ambassador: External Miles and Points Resources
Original Poster
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Digital Nomad Wandering the Earth - Currently in LIMA, PERU
Posts: 58,607
