FlyerTalk Forums - History Question for Randy

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I was just wondering - what IS the history behind flyertalk? Thanks!

Randy will have to answer that as far as the birth of the idea and formulation of FlyerTalk, but I did pull up these three posts to get you started:

Posted by Randy Petersen:

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FT doesn't exist for anyone but those who contribute. And as you all might know, FlyerTalk in 1998 did not exist as it does now, only as a subset of WebFlyer. It really wasn't until the good graces of Catman, Rudi, NJDavid* that FlyerTalk came into it's own on 11/1/99,

However, FlyerTalk did exist briefly in 1995 and i think that PremEx might be the only one who did participate in that experiment.

Anyway, a great history of growth and i think you'll all agree that beyond the occasional outburst of opinions unrelated to FlyerTalk, it has made us all that much richer for our miles, our points, our travel experiences and having come off a great visit with members in Seattle, our new friends.

*(Even though it was Randy/WebFlyer that created the actual bulletin board and named it "FlyerTalk"...Catman, Rudi, and NJDavid had early on anticipated and secured by purchase the www.flyertalk.com web domain name to "reserve/protect" it and later presented it to Randy as a gift when he decided to sorta spin-off the FlyerTalk bulletin board from the WebFlyer page and give it it's own URL.)

Posted by PremEx:

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My first post on FlyerTalk doesn't exist any longer. Not even in Archives.

That's because FlyerTalk V1.o was a short lived experiment back in 1995(?) that unfortunately quickly degraded to usenet levels of bile that made a bad day in OMNI look like a ladies' garden party by comparison! :(

So Randy quickly put it out of it's misery and resurrected it again a few years later in May of 1998 with the FlyerTalk we all know and love today. I guess you could call it "The Passion Of The FlyerTalk." :)

Posted by PremEx:

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I found out about the original FlyerTalk via a phone call a loooong time ago with Randy Petersen about a frequent flyer issue. He mentioned it to me. It was a short-lived experiment that was quickly flooded by usenet types of trolls and porn peddlers...so Randy shut it down.

Then a year or two (?) later, Randy started up another version of FlyerTalk in 1998, which is pretty much what you see today. I found out about this one from Randy too, during another phone call about a fantastic United Mileage Plus--->Hilton HHonors exchange promotion (ah..the good old days) that was going on. He mentioned it to me then.

Having recalled the sting of the first attempt at FlyerTalk...I just lurked a few weeks until I was sure that Rudi, Catman, Matt Wald, and several other early members were not apparent axe murderers or web psycho-stalkers. I'm still not totally convinced about a couple of them! ;)

It was a much more civil place and the inhabitants seemed to genuinely want to learn and/or teach and/or share their experiences to help one another, so I stuck around a spell. :)

If you want to browse some of the earliest FlyerTalk posts from 1998 just for fun, go into the MilesBuzz forum, and scroll down to the bottom of the first page to "Display Options" and there change "From The:" to "Beginning", and then change "Sort Order" to "Ascending" and then hit the "Show Threads" button. :)

You may notice several threads and posts by one FlyerTaker...MileMonitor. This was actually Randy Petersen sort of clandestinely "seeding" the brand new FlyerTalk by starting threads to get conversations going. ;)