In many ways the HairTalk boards are a safe haven from what has happened to the limping along MySpace, advertising crazed Facebook, spam infested YouTube and even the dangerous hacking which goes on regularly at Twitter.
Here at HairTalk, except for some spam that the board admins work hard to eliminate as quickly as possible, Hairboutique.com doesn't do any of the extreme marketing things Facebook does.
I find HairTalk to be a safe haven, I use the Private Messenger to send messages I know are completely safe and since HairBoutique.com has been around for 15+ years without charging for use of the HairTalk boards, I don't think they are going away anytime soon.
Although unappreciative HT users post that the board needs a facelift, think about Facebook which is huge, but is also struggling in its own way and they have millions...billions of dollars to spend.
Statistics have shown in the USA and other English speaking countries FB has reached saturation point and popularity is is starting to flat-line and decline. Statistics are indicating that eventually FB may go the way of MySpace with massive loss of interest and loss of users/posts to pages and support of the huge network.
Here at Hairtalk we are spared from so much of the Social Media Marketing noise which happens by major brands who believe that getting magical likes is the most important thing for their brands.
Brands really don't care what they post or how often...just so they build their brands. That really doesn't happen here at HairTalk. Even HairBoutique is pretty quiet about promoting themselves and they pay for the HT boards which have always been free.
Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are at the
back of the class with the plaintive cry of ”pick me, pick me”.
What you may not have noticed about Facebook and some other related types of boards, forums and similar is that there is an almost unseemly posting frenzy happening. People and brands are posting images
of dogs, cats and aliens just to get attention..any attention on social media such as FB, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube.
That really doesn't happen here at HT unless someone is spamming or blatantly advertising...which is removed.
I actually appreciate the peace and quiet here at HairTalk which has very meaningful posts when they do occur.
Facebook recently adjusted its “Edgerank” calculation that determines
what FB posts appear in Fan’s timelines. The free organic Facebook marketing
that we all enjoyed has been diminished by Facebook making sure that
less of brands updates appear on the Facebook’s fan pages. Updates are
now appearing in 15% or less of all timelines.
Some reports indicate that the reduction in the number or FB readers of FB pages updates is in the range of 5-40%.
Facebook owns its network and it will continue to change the rules to suit its vision and commercial interests with a highlight on commercial interests.
Facebook has gone public and the only way Facebook can monetize their
platform is through advertising.
Facebook will continue to look at ways of creating revenue that pays
the bills because now they have shareholders to placate. Want to reach
more fans?… then you will need to start to reach into your pocket and
pay the piper.
Facebook’s next steps will include the monetization of the mobile
platform Instagram that they paid $1 billion for. Mobile ads are the
next frontier.
The reality is that you are just a renting tenant on Facebook and you are there under their very strict rules, terms and conditions.
Break the rules and you pay the price. Recently the pop culture blog and website The Cool Hunter randomly had its Facebook page with over 700,000 fans shutdown over “copyright issues” according to Facebook.
The challenge for brands that are heavily Facebook centric for their
social media marketing is that an unexpected “shutdown” can leave a
severe dent in traffic to your websites. The Cool Hunter saw a drop in
traffic of over 10% when its Facebook page was shuttered.
Just keep in mind that Facebook doesn’t have a call center for
handling complaints. The lights are on but no customer service folk are
at home. HairBoutique.com does and so does HairTalk.
I know because Karen, Jeff and the web team have all personally answered some of my emails. I have called their toll free line and talked to some of the customer care people who listened and took notes about a HairTalk problem I was having.
While FB, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are great, the years how shown that websites come and go but some remain and offer a great place to hangout and share information.
Yes, it's always nice to update or get a face lift, I love that HairTalk has always been free, as long as you following the posting guidelines you are pretty much left alone and it's been here consistently for 15+ years.
I just wanted to let the HairTalk folks know that I appreciate them for being here and hope they don't go away anytime soon...or ever.