New FT features 27 Mar 2017 for logged in users not using ad blockers
 

Hello FlyerTalkers,

In our continued efforts to bring our members the best, free travel experience on the Web, FlyerTalk is implementing several new social features to make it easier to get the latest information on programs and travel industry developments. These features are live as of 12pm PT on Monday, March 27, 2017.

The new features will allow logged-in users who are not using ad blockers on FT to do the following:

1. Set up automatic KEYWORD ALERTS and HASHTAGS that let you track mentions of your favorite programs, events, or anything else.
2. FOLLOW USERS who post information you find useful.
3. TAG USERS in posts, and get notifications when you've been tagged -- an easy way to bring a thread to someone's attention.

You can access each of these new features by going to My FlyerTalk, and scroll all the way down to view each new feature in the bottom of the left side menu.

Attachment 28837

KEYWORD ALERTS

Once you click on "Keyword Alerts" on MyFlyerTalk, you can set up an alert by:

1. Typing in a keyword
2. Selecting whether you want to receive this alert hourly, daily or weekly
3. Selecting whether you want to receive alerts via email, as a private message, or both
4. Selecting a forum
5. Clicking "Create and Save Alert"

Disabling alerts:

Once you set up an alert, that alert will display in a list. You can turn off an alert by simply clicking "Delete" on the far right of the corresponding alert.

Attachment 28838

HASHTAGS

In "Hash Tag Subscriptions", you can add hashtag subscriptions by typing in the hashtag you'd like to subscribe to and clicking "Submit". You will get an email whenever one of your subscribed hashtags is used. Whenever someone uses this hashtag in a post, you'll get an alert. For example, if you subscribe to #Avios you will get an alert every time someone types "#Avios" on FlyerTalk.

Disabling Hashtags:

1. Click the checkbox next to the hashtag you wish to delete and click "Submit"

or

2. Go to "Settings" under "User Tagging" in MyFlyerTalk, select the "Disable Hash Tag Subscription Emails" option, and click "Save Changes".

Attachment 28841


FOLLOW USERS

To follow another member, click on the member's username. This will take you to that user's profile where you can click "Follow User". You may also click their username in a post, and use the pulldown menu.

To view the activity of other members you are following, click on "You are following 'x' users" in MyFlyerTalk, which will take you to a list of the users you're following. Then click "Find Recent Posts" to view the other members' activity.

Unfollow a User

1. Click "Unfollow User" on the user profile page

or

2. Click "You are following 'x' users", which will take you to a page with a list of the users you're following. To unfollow a specific user, you would click "Un-Follow / Remove" for the corresponding user

You can also turn off the ability of others to follow you, in your user CP. If you do this, you will disappear from their list of followed users.

Attachment 28840


TAGGING A MEMBER

Tagging allows FTers to bring a thread to the attention of other members.

To tag another member, make a post that includes @ and their username, such as @IBobi.

To manage who can tag you, go to "Settings" in your Control Panel and do one or more of the following:

1. Restrict tag alerts to only come from users on your friends list.
2. Hide tag alerts
3. Disable thread tag emails
4. Disable desktop notifications

(since getting notified is the only effect of being tagged, disabling these notifications is the same thing as turning off tagging for yourself)

We hope these features help you to get more out of FlyerTalk, and if not, we have made every effort to ensure that if you do not want them, you do not have to use them :)

Best,

The FT Team

New Post Quotes
 

What is this new nonsense that I don't recall anyone asking for and how do I turn this additional piece of absolute garbagio off? :mad:

Oh it gets even better when I look under my post count! This place is going backwards. Thank goodness there is value in the posts on this forum.

@IBxAnders

Maybe take a peek at the announcements before railing against something you can just turn off if you don't like it?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...-blockers.html

Maybe just leave it as it was? Just a thought.

Or at the absolute very least don't force people to all of a sudden have a ton of spam shoved down their throats. Unbelievable.

The latest FT software update means I get an email whenever anyone quotes me.
 

The latest FT software update means I get an email whenever anyone quotes me.

When you have ~20k posts, that tends to happen frequently.

Hint: You can turn it off on http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/usert...action=options (Disable Quote Emails)

We won't be leaving FT's features static.

The only way to allow users to see what these new features are like is to turn them on. You can turn them off easy as pie, with the instructions that were posted before they were even turned on.

As far as I know, the only way you could even be getting new notifications from these tools is if you had previously hashtagged anything, @ tagged users (or been tagged by someone else), or followed people. And there was no way to add keyword alerts to a list before, so you couldn't have been notified of those at all.

That reminds me, how can I find this elusive 10,000th post that was mentioned a few pages back. Possibly in another thread.

Or is it lost and gone forever?

I'll be leaving my adblocker on. Nothing in those features worthy of turning it off.

What I can never understand is why companies want you to turn off the adblocker anyway. By the fact that I've already installed it I am saying to you and your advertisers that I do not want their product. So even if I turned it off - I'd be ignoring them. And as such you'd be selling a product that I can guarantee I'd never use. What good is that to anyone?

It was the email for quotes. I had done none of those things you describe.

You should not be getting alerts when someone quotes you. I'll look into it.

Do you get lifetime status for that many posts?

Just viewing the ads is good for the website (which provides its services for free BTW). And nobody knows they don't want a product that they haven't been shown ;)

Someone should tell the system that. My emaol box is flooded with SPAM as far as I'm concerned. Everything a person quotes you, you get another.

BTW real websites don't turn junk like this on with no notice, test their updates before making them live, and finally they listen to their user base.

Posts relocated from Air Canada forum for further discussion.

tcook052
Air Canada forum moderator

Apparently that quote notification feature piggybacked its way in on the others -- we didn't know it was there!

So we have turned that feature into an OPT-IN feature, so that you will need to go to your MyFT and turn it ON if you want quote notifications; I will add this to a future announcement.

Thanks for your vigilance!

Paul

Quote notifications are now OPT-IN -- see above!

Here's how to turn them ON:

Go to MyFlyerTalk
Go to USER TAGGING
Go to SETTINGS
Go to:
Quote Restriction (to only be alerted when someone on your friends list quotes you)
Quote Alerts (to never be alerted when you're quoted)
Quote emails (Check this box if you wish to receive an email whenever you are quoted in a post)

SAVE CHANGES

Agreed! Now I'm getting emails! I certainly didn't sign up for this. epic fail! :mad::mad::mad:

I'm getting "you've been quoted" emails: extremely annoying.

Those will/have stopped.

Who knew there'd be an advantage to not being social media savvy? :p :D Haven't had any of the problems others have experienced.

One thing I will say though is that it would behoove IB to do a lot of research/polls/surveys amongst FTers whenever they decide to implement something that will 'enhance' FT. It would help avoid pissing off FTers. However, it's common knowledge that FT does its enhancements for the sake of IB & not FTers.

Cheers.

In this case, it would not have helped.

1. The only part of the tool that was a problem was quote notifications.
2. We did not know they were even there, so even if we asked someone about the tools we implemented, we would not have asked about the tool that ended up being a minor, temporary annoyance.
3. Quote notices are now turned off by default so won't be an issue any longer.

Is the intent to show the pop-up more than once?

I'm getting it every time I switch to a different forum.

How do I stop the popup asking me to turn off my ad blocker to get the new features? I don't need it popping up every time I click on something. No, I'm not going to turn off the ad blocker yet.

Edit to add: I see that it only pops up on new forums I haven't visited yet. I guess that is okay.

It shouldn't pop up more then once. Period.

I've had that stupid message shoved at me a good 20 times in the last 15 minutes.

Is there any way to disable having the system automatically link hashtags? i wanted to use the number sign as a number sign, but FT tried to make it a hashtag. I think a post-by-post disabling, like how we can disable smileys on a post-by-post basis, would be good for this feature if we want to actually use # as a number sign.

Pops up on every new page that's loaded for me (even when making this post). What garbage, super annoying. :mad:

I'm curious. Do the powers that be at FT sit down and decide what they can change to piss off the most people they can at once because it sure feels that way every time some new "enhancement" is rolled out.

When ever FT has an upgrade/enhancement/additional features (unnecessary unwanted) there is a mad scramble on how to disable/kill them.

You have been quoted at FlyerTalk Forums
 

Received this notification on my email. Could not find a way to turn it off. Any advice?

You are not the only person to note this *&%
Turning all this new stuff off is not hard, and seems to work

Look here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...-blockers.html

oh really ????

I keep getting a popup asking if I want FT to enable notifications ... I want to be notified about PMs, but I don't give a rip about a notification that there's been an increase in the count of how many times I've been quoted or how many of my posts include a quote

:td: totally useless enhancement :td:

OMG seriously? These new 'features' should be set default to off/disabled unless you go in and actively choose to turn them on.

Luckily I went in and turned all of the notifications and email off so I didn't get much.

Stop this stupid nonsense. Every time I click on something in FT now I get a popup about the new features. I can find no way to turn off ad blocker. This is like something a 4th grade computer club would invent--although probably that is a disservice to 4th graders who would be more intelligent to pull a stunt like this. What in the world were you thinking? Apparently not thinking at all. I am very angry.

However, it shouldn't be necessary. If someone opted out of the email notification earlier, it should *stay* turned off and not require intervention.

Well whether it should be necessary or not (and I agree w/ you), if it's turned on again the only way to turn it is to do it again. So FTers can let themselves be bothered or go in & turn it off again.

Cheers.

Get Notifications?
 

Huh? I'm on a desktop computer. Isn't this for people using mobile devices? If so, why am I getting it?

There should not be such a popup more than once per session. I'll ask tech about it.

You may want to ensure that your browser accepts cookies and that you are logged in, since that is likely how this is kept track of.

Not that I know of. But it should not affect anything other than the link turning blue.

Can you post a screen shot of the popup about the new features? I'm not seeing it.

Instructions for turning off your particular ad blocker should come with your blocker; there is also a link to some general instructions in our notice that asks you to turn it off.

NVM I am now seeing the "try the new features" popup -- we are working to get it to appear only once per session. I'm sorry about that, I wasn't aware of it before now.

I wish some development focus would go to stopping the incessant spam advertising that pops up on the mobile site at least 2-3 times a day instead of rolling out features with little value-add