Even if I'm relatively new to FT I have learned a lot from FT so far. I suspect I will learn a lot more in the future.

Congrats to Randy on the sale, and thanks a lot for making FT possible. Great to know you will be around for, hopefully, a long time to come.

Yes, transcripts for all the chats will be posted on Monday here in the ORP thread and we'll update the announcements to link to them.

Thanks for the question.

Ever since I stumbled on VRBO a few years ago, its my default choice when looking to trade hotel points for vacation properties.

Thanks, mn3guy...
 

...thanks for the positive words. We're endeavored to be a good acquisition partner with sound judgment on preserving that is working with sites such as this. And we're always open to feedback. :)

questions
 

Kiwi Flyer, I'm also happy to answer questions here if that's helpful, or feel free to message me.

OK, then, I'd really like to hear what I was curious about earlier -- not what is IB's plan for FT, but what is IB's ultimate goal or strategy for the collection of sites they are putting together? That will certainly help ME decide if I believe the recitations made so far!

strategy
 

Richard, naturally as a private company we don't generally talk publicly about strategy items. However, we've already developed a track record on sites such as Wikitravel preserving the site and community as is, and being sure not to change or mess up what is special about each of these communities. We will certainly endeavor to do the same with FT.

It is quite valuable for a company to be able just to take a look at the internal statistics and community movements to use this experience and apply it to other ventures.

As such a company with such a record it should also be possible to for example charge better deals for the advertisement blocks you see.

Also a base like flyertalk can be used to market to them (if agreed upon and I think many people would not object to this if done properly), get information out of them and as said before do data mining.

All of this is just off the top of my head speculation about possibilities. Nothing of this affects the way FT is run at the moment. wikitravel.org is a very good example for this, take a look at this and try to tell that this is run by a commercial venture.

And basic community knowledge: If they change to much they will have problems with the userbase - something I am sure IB is very aware of. :o)

And even if so, FT users will just find a new home.

First of all, Randy, congratulations on the sale of FT. You created this wonderful place in 1998 and have grown it to the point it became a valuable asset to not only the members, but to you. Watching it grow to what it is today has been one heck of a ride ;).

FT has been your labor of love.. well, labor :). I'm sure there are many times where you wanted to pull the plug on the servers & leave them unplugged. By selling it, well, it becomes just another board to a group of IBB "collectors." Those collectors will want to make a profit, as they should, and the very nature of FT might change. I doubt there are many other boards on the internet with the type of users you have managed to attract.

I'm still torn about the entire deal. I hope things only change for the better, and like many others, fear the changes will be profit rather than community motivated.

I would imagine that with ads being a primary way to make any money on here, not much should change.

If, however, IBB starts to do fees or levels of status or some deal with points and miles in its own site, then this could change things. Sure, some of that could be cool--I mean, imagine GETTING MILES for posting ABOUT MILES? Could be a sort of uber igo ugo and yes, it could be really interesting if you'd retroactively gain pointage on the number of posts! woo hoo to some of you FT evangelists, eh?

BUT this would end up having costs and also a sort of exclusivity about it, which many people may not wish to deal with.

The original thinking I had when coming here (and to one other forum about miles I go onto) was to rant about or help others who rant about my issues with travel and miles from a consumer standpoint.

that is something people really need. If the site changes from having this available to me, then maybe there will have to be a new "FT" created by those of us who still would want that to exist somewhere on the internet.

We shall see!
:)MM

change
 

Replying to Mary2e and Marathon Man's dialogue (and others earlier in the thread), we don't have plans for any significant changes such as fees. Preserving what's good about FT, focusing on ad revenue, and supporting and growing the community will be primary areas of consideration for us. Small evolutionary changes rather than dramatic ones...and hopefully making the site better, not worse, for it's community of users.

-- John

Thank you.

Doing something about dowload speed and reliability would be a very nice positive change. With my dial up access and IE browser, the system constantly hangs, or worse, aborts (with a message saying it has done so, no less), and always has the slowest download of any site I visit regularly. I suspect that tribal fusion is the problem, but I am not certain.

I'm with you on this one. That would be a nice change; however I have to admit on a 46 kbps dial up once I went to FT premium recently and using firefox has really helped that issue for me. Plus I kind of like Inside Flyer. Randy said it will remain the same deal for now, if you join Inside Flyer you will get the add free FT and it's like 12 dollars a year or something like that. I did the two year thing for 24 bucks and my loading issues have become much better even when I use IE. Just spending the 24 bucks or whatever it was (mabye 48 I can't remember but it was not that bad for me) I already feel it's money well spent and I still get 1 year and 50 weeks or so left of this. :D

Wow.. so long of a time.. I think I have been on here for about 7 years or more... I was originally LAX1K now.. my new name... :)

It is awesome seeing Rudi and others add to this thread. So many great people over the years. It makes sense to me, economy of shared servers, shared tech support and better economies... :)

Great job! Randy, you did right for us!