The General Discussion Board has turned into the Oprah board.  Posts that aren't Oprah-like, are usually retreads.   And in that month, Attacks have continued unabated, cliques have formed that gang post either in support or against other posters, and posters get onto posting highs in which they act like they own the boards.  No matter how much things change, they stay the same.

The Regional Boards, which were on life support to begin with, have had the plug pulled and are now dead.  I never thought that I'd see the following:

At the time of this post, the first page of each of the traditionally active regional boards had:

Atlanta         - 5 days of threads

Boston          - 11 days of threads

Chicago        - 5 days of threads

Florida          - 7 days of threads

LV                - 11 (ELEVEN) days of threads

LA                - 5 days of threads

Minn.            - 5 Days of threads

NY                - 7 days of threads,  and

DC.              - 7 days of threads

Please bring back hobbyist/member mods and aliases.

BTW, the host/hostess won't help - just look at Atlanta and Florida - they have 5 and 7 days of threads on the first page respectively, and most of the threads are picture theme threads anyway.

This experiment was toxic.  The boards are deader than Whitney Houston.  Let's have a return to FUN.

I'm afraid the ONLY way this is going to end anytime soon is if enough folks STOP paying for VIP.

Until then you have what you have.  And you are spot on with your analysis.

Anytime an "interesting" thread formed it either got pruned or pulled.

But there is no lack of "where do i put my cum"...and the gals have created lengthy blogs of their favorite topics that should be on a board dedicated to "providers"...oh wait, they already have that board, don't they?

at the top of the page. Check New Mexico, Portland, etc. TER adm posted that back on 2/27. Amazing.

still a dead deal.  You have a handful of gals that have decided to take over the posting and are using this to just post faux ads....ad nauseum.

Theme days...right!

The ChiTown board was pretty tame before the "changes"....now it is just a joke.  And with no "mods" to remove the faux ads they are just obnoxious.  Same old gals...same old pics..same old, same old.

But at least the same few guys post their drivel on a gals posting...yet they don't see them.  Nothings changed there

Portland, New Mexico, Kansas, extremely dead. Seattle, Orange County and a few others really close to death. I don't see any changes in those boards before or after the changes. The boards DC was talking about were the ones that used to be active, that are dying since the changes.

TER doesn't make money from discussion boards. It generates revenue from traffic to the site. Providers are the main draw to the site and reviews are a close second. Dues are a negligible percentage of income. Take a look at the graph from Alexa and draw your own conclusions.

So for the first month there is no significant change in traffic.  And I would expect that to be the case.

The "experiment" needs to run for a period of time that will show some benefits to the changes.  I would expect that TER is looking at all types of data to determine the value of their investments.

The boards will be what they will be.  And perhaps at some point they will again become vibrant, but that seems to be way off in the distance.

The oxymoron is that given the traffic patterns, there was NO upside in changing the boards.  So I can only surmise that TER has some other agenda to deal with.

We shall all wait and see....well not all of us...but some!

this kind of site.  Most of the guys who click through from a provider's website or an escort mall inherently mistrust any site like this as just shill sites for the providers.  Unless they can see from the discussion boards that the site allows honest feedback and discussion that is not provider centric, a good number of them will avoid any paid membership.  Particularly if they see that there are no hobbyists involved in the post approval.  The natural wrong assumption would be that the providers are protected as paying advertisers (they won't stick around long enough to discover that they are not) and that TER is just another scam site.

I know, you have said that paid membership is a small part of the income.  Yes, but the buzz amongst the hobby about TER, and the integrity of its reviews, is an unmeasurable factor in driving and keeping traffic to the site.  

This can't be stressed enough.  The hobby in this country is not legal, and is constantly actively attacked by LE.  Regular advertising will not work in the US as well as it will elsewhere.  The underground hobby community communicates amongst itself, and the buzz about certain ad sites, review sites, and the like - good or bad- is very important to keeping traffic.  If the buzz goes negative, and the community gets the idea that this site is Provider centric rather than Hobbyist centric, then that traffic could very well be driven away from the site.  Keep in mind that the most vocal and active members of this site are also members of other discussion forums as well as Meet and Greet participants in the different regions.

Now, as to the conclusion that I draw from your graph - at best case for the changes, the traffic didn't change appreciatively over the month.  If that is true, then why piss off the active discussion board participants to the point that many left and have started to denigrate the site?

The WKs will charge you with heresy.  They live for theme days and seeing the same pics over & over & over.

How insensitive of me

I love those same 5+ year old pics just like those fellas.

But do I have to fawn over them as well?  I'm really not too good at that part of the game

it's host.  I have no power to do anything as before.  I have seen the traffic there slow down a lot.  Just not as many questions to answer.  I still have some 'highly unpaid assistants' that fill in with answers when I don't get to the thread, and I thank them.  I have to agree with everyone, the change has slowed down the boards.

Swim