I had been a regular poster on both Key and the WIX forums for the last 15 years (1,775 posts – I have to get a life lol) and would read both sites daily.
I was also a poster and reader of the Australian “Warbirdz” forum but that was a financial drain on its owner and closed.
We can all lament the disaster of the forum software upgrade and the loss of long term and informative contributors / posters.
Its very clear Key Aero saw these forums as a major element of their digital marketing and transition strategy but failed to do any customer survey of their existing customers before doing the “upgrade”/“refresh” or whatever was proposed and approved by management.
But its not that fiasco or Covid that is causing the drop in posters.
Just like Covid and working from home has changed the work life balance, the rise of FaceBook Groups is challenging the tradional bulletin board type discussion forums.
Yes – facebook feeds and private messaging is not suitable for the long and ongoing technical debates with pictures that these forums are suited to, but FaceBook Groups are.
I can get up in the morning and see the recent activities in FB Groups that are created and dedicated to a specific aircraft or airline or military service that I have joined.
I can search and find other groups or create my own.
I and others can post and reply with long counts of text and with embedded photos.
I can choose to opt in to following one or more Facebook Groups specifically on my preferred topics of interest and don’t need to page back over threads I have no interest in reading as occurs in a traditional forum like this.
I used to dread the UK Airshow season as the Historic forum flooded with threads of photos of the same aircraft from the same angle from the same position on the fence by tens or score of photographers wanting to showcase their photos, creating the dedicated Photo forums was the best thing that ever occured here, and I have never been in there since, but I am sure those interested were motivated to do so.
I hardly come to here or WIX any more, I would be lucky to average once a month, but I still see and have debates with Bruce or Mark12 – but there and not here, so I am not the only one finding Facebook capable of “meeting my needs”
I can take a discussion into Private Messenger and the people I chat to are real and identified not hiding behind an anonymous “handles”
published hard copy magazines had already been dying long before Covid but many more have died in recent years (and not just Aviation titles), Key Aero have some important and much loved aviation magazine titles to promote and manage lest they die too, eventually even those are likely to need to become subscription based digital eMagazines rather than printed copies sitting in Newsagent shops around the world hoping for opportunity sales.
I havent “left” here or felt a need to announce that I have “left”, but I don’t come here very often any more and “above” is the reasons I don’t- its not simply the new format or change in functionality, or the loss of some valuable posters and a reduction in forum activity – its because there is competion for my attention and a service at my fingertips, with disrupters and digital transitions occuring that some companies and their traditional products and services will not survive.
Interestingly I don’t see Facebook advertising in KP magazines or in the digital banners on this forum site, but I am not the only one recognising the marketplace value that FB creates.
https://m.facebook.com/KeyAeroMags/
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