I'm torn.

Been here nearly 7 years and have seen Appletalk grow to Mactalk, start a magazine and stop just as quick, podcasts, articles, the insanity of "where is iTMS for AU" followed by "where is iPhone for AU", news, more growth, PowerBook G5 FTW!!!, a sale etc etc.

What kept me coming was the community. Mactalk was just that, a place to talk about Macs and Apple stuff. To help people and to get help in return. The site existed so people could communicate with other of like minds and interests.

Now it seems that that is still here but it seems dulled. No offence to Niche Media but I don't think they see a site created for a community. They instead see it as an opportunity to monetize. That's fine, but just because the community is the product being sold doesn't mean it's still not made of people. As has been mentioned, piss the people off and the people will piss off. It IS possible to provide an environment for a community to flourish while making money on the side but sticking ads everywhere and justifying it with "well the site isn't free to run so suck it up" isn't going to win precious eyeballs to sell to advertisers and your ad real estate will drop in value.

Keep the users happy and let the bottom line take care of itself. Appears to have worked rather well for a certain fruit named company we all seem to like.

I think the problem is that Niche don't quite yet know what type of site this is.

Is it primarily a community forum? Well, they're annoying the community with irrelevant, I'll-placed ads and that has slowed down forum participation for many.

Or is it primarily a tech news site? Well the front page is full of sponsored articles, the late Steve Jobs (may you PLEASE let him rest in peace), and any opportunity for real journalism is wasted, like that wishy-washy "let's just get it out of the way" summary of Mountain Lion we read yesterday.

You're doing it wrong! The site looks like bollocks in its Windows-esque blue and grey, you keep flogging products to us disguised as journalism, real journalism is just short rehashes of other sites' in-depth hard work, and there are ads out the wazoo. All this HAS to be affecting site patronage.

Why do I think that? Because I can login once every three days and still only get one page of new forum posts since my last login. This place was active not too long ago.

Take a long, hard look at yourself, Niche. Work out what you want with thee site and do it. And do it with some pride.

Originally Posted by Steeley

I think the problem is that Niche don't quite yet know what type of site this is.

Is it primarily a community forum? ...Or is it primarily a tech news site?

It was primarily a community forum for Australian Mac users. I think the tech news site can happen but it needs to be something that isn't already done better elsewhere.

I'm still not a fan of the layout, that old speech bubble layout WORKED, it was simple and easy to navigate. The new posts page still has bugs in it, I still cannot see the number of pages in a thread.

Overall CONTENT (Read: Not advertising) has dropped and the content that is on the homepage is mostly $#!T that I don't even bother reading (except benny's efforts, but I usually read them every 3 days). Decryption's posts about announcements by Apple used to be full of witty and sometimes pointless remarks but were enjoyable to read, they also used to be linked to the forum post which usually had already been started by a member to avoid double posting and encouraging users to comment on the announcement. Mountain Lion is an example of decreasing posts, 3 pages over 2 days is pretty pathetic compared to some announcements. This post for example, it's about whether people got their copy of snow leopard or not, 54 pages.... Go figure.


and where has the thankfulness of members gone, previously you used to get a thank you message and a nice conversation when helping someone, now even when you help them they piss off like you never existed.

I'm really finding less and less time for MacTalk, I used to come daily and spend over an hour replying to posts and browsing. Now i'd be lucky to spend 10 minutes. There was a point where a member made a growl plugin to notify of new posts, I used to have to disable that frequently because there were too many notifications to concentrate on what I was meant to be doing.

I still cannot see the number of pages in a thread.

I thought I had an issue also...then I just realised that all the page numbers are in WHITE coloured font under the name of each thread. Go ahead and hover just below and you will see it.

Yeah, or tilt your screen back if you have a laptop.

Mactalk.com.au Site Info much like you all and looking at these stats many others.

Bounce high and low click through to the forums.

If I was running the business they would get my attention as something to address.

I told that cat-shit thing down the bottom to piss off but it comes back every couple of days.

I hadn't even realised this had happened as I've subconsciously stopped using the forum as much as I used to.

Perhaps this is why.

Originally Posted by thorevenge

The community went to hell ages ago. The acquisition by Niche wasn't the catalyst in my opinion, the community was nosediving a long time before that.

Don't know if I'd agree with that statement. There was a shift about 18-24 months ago but the community was still here. I haven't done a lot of posting in the past 6 months and in that time there has been a huge difference. Used to be the live post spy would be constantly moving for most hours of the day.

After the sale there was anticipation of what MacTalk would grow in to but it seems it's the same site with more ads and a lot of people would find that 'meh' (remember Niche, this is a community that thinks whatever cool gadget Apple released is 'meh' if it didn't meet or exceed the rumour mill....even if it really is a cool gadget). In short, Mactalk feels stagnant now. Something needs to happen or the community (and thus, the site) will die.

Anthony always had something in the pipeline. Whether it worked or not was irrelevant but at least there was a sense of 'coming soon'. That presence needs to be here and it isn't. There's no-one running the site that has the passion for the community to see the site though.

On that note, I'll just leave this here

All Niche are doing is buying a ticking timebomb. Nothing lasts forever, and eventually Anthony had to move on, but selling to Niche means MacTalk will go with him. All that's going to happen here, is that someone is going to eventually have enough and start a new Australian Apple site, and the cycle will start again.

"But how will we keep the site running without ads!" Niche say. Anthony kept a balance, and he was for the most part on his own. You guys are just taking the cop-out. Saying most sites have ads isn't an excuse, because they don't give us three sponsored posts in a row, and a catshit bar at the bottom. If you want to be like every other site with a large amount of ads, you can have the same sized community as them.

Originally Posted by gehenna

With the sale of MacTalk, so too went some of the relationships leveraged in the past to provide the service to you. There are now costs involved in hosting this site, its traffic, and it's continuity, that were not there (or at least were not as large) in the past.

Pro-tip: Work on restoring some of those relationships.

Originally Posted by bartron

I'm torn.

Been here nearly 7 years and have seen Appletalk grow to Mactalk, start a magazine and stop just as quick, podcasts, articles, the insanity of "where is iTMS for AU" followed by "where is iPhone for AU", news, more growth, PowerBook G5 FTW!!!, a sale etc etc.

What kept me coming was the community. Mactalk was just that, a place to talk about Macs and Apple stuff. To help people and to get help in return. The site existed so people could communicate with other of like minds and interests.

Now it seems that that is still here but it seems dulled. No offence to Niche Media but I don't think they see a site created for a community. They instead see it as an opportunity to monetize. That's fine, but just because the community is the product being sold doesn't mean it's still not made of people. As has been mentioned, piss the people off and the people will piss off. It IS possible to provide an environment for a community to flourish while making money on the side but sticking ads everywhere and justifying it with "well the site isn't free to run so suck it up" isn't going to win precious eyeballs to sell to advertisers and your ad real estate will drop in value.

Keep the users happy and let the bottom line take care of itself. Appears to have worked rather well for a certain fruit named company we all seem to like.

Niche own another site dont they ? As I cant understand how they could be so stupid to let things get this bad, I can only come to the conclusion that its deliberate.....killing off a competitor by aquisition

I think this thread has run its course.

EDIT: I stand corrected.

Originally Posted by gehenna

I think this thread has run its course.

EDIT: I stand corrected.

And hows that?