ZooChat is 16 years old!
- Thread starter Simon Hampel
- Start date
21. Posts per user per month (3 month moving average)
"On average, how many posts does each user make per month?"
I would actually expect these charts to trend downwards over time, as we get more users - the average posts per user should decrease (based on the assumption that the majority of posts are made by a minority of users).
"On average, how many posts does each user make per month?"
I would actually expect these charts to trend downwards over time, as we get more users - the average posts per user should decrease (based on the assumption that the majority of posts are made by a minority of users).
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At first glance, many of these statistics indicate a period of decline in participation and activity in the first half of the 2010's, with a turnaround mid-decade resulting in growing activity for the past ~5 years. I'm curious as to whether this was just a random, delayed achievement of critical mass after the novelty wore off, or if something in particular prompted any part in the changes.
In general, I would suggest that two main factors had a negative influence on engagement levels during the early 2010's ...
Firstly, the rise of mobile devices - the old forum software was not mobile friendly and as more people relied more heavily on mobile devices to interact with websites - sites like ours suffered because it was all too difficult. We migrated to the current forum software in Oct 2016, which dramatically improved the mobile user interface - and there is a clear increase in engagement levels after this time. I'm hoping the next upgrade will make that even better.
Secondly, the rise of social media platforms. There are now dozens (if not hundreds) of social media platforms competing for everyone's attention. Between YouTube channels, Facebook groups, Reddit, Twitter and even postcasts - the number of sites and platforms competing for attention has exploded in the last decade. Indeed, many forums have not been able to compete with the rise of Facebook groups and similar - especially if they don't have anything unique that can't be easily replicated on other platforms.
That's one of the reason I'm spending so much time working on upgrading the site to the newest version of the software - because it will then allow me to use that as a platform to build new functionality and continue to provide a unique offering on ZooChat that you can't get anywhere else - with the aim of increasing engagement with the broader community.
It will be nice to have the comment section visible like it was in the old format. Losing that function sharply curtailed a lot of interesting conversations that happened in the photo gallery.
Definitely - it's very distinctly shown in the stats the impact it had.
New version of the software has this missing functionality - so I'm keen to get the site upgraded!
