Where is everybody?, Are we all too busy now????? Options

[Egg Designer]

Activity here seems to have died a death, just a bit of b'day/births/marriges etc when the appropriate day arises. Am I missing something?

[james]

I suspect the lack of activity is mostly caused by two things: Facebook and something I am calling 'spiraling no new content apathy' :-

Facebook is the new thing (or the old thing for some people) - it's pretty much replacing MySpace as the place to be social online (MySpace is both seen as being old-hat and just nasty to look at) so I think people are spending more time there than they may have on RP. However I am predicting a bit of a downturn on FaceBook - the novelty wearing off, it getting more crowded and less 'useful' and people are starting to get a bit suspicious of FB - check out these links: With friends like these ... and Facebookís crazy terms of use - the two of them come to some shocking conclusions, including NeoCon financing and

This is just nuts. Basically, theyíre welcome to take your stuff, make a copy, and use it for a multi-million dollar ad campaign if they want. Or, they could license YOUR photo to someone else to do the same.

- they are worth reading.

The other thing (spiraling no new content apathy) is where you go to a site a few times a week, check out what's new, reply to a few threads and maybe post up something new you have seen or been sent. When people have started or replied in a thread they tend to revisit it for a while to see if it has progressed and to keep track of it. If traffic drops for any reason you get less posts, which leads to less replies and means people are less likely to revisit - leading to a spiral of less and less traffic.

I think we can do a couple of things to combat all this - if you see, get sent of make something of interest go ahead and post it up - you won't get many replies to start with as there aren't as many people visiting regularly but don't be disheartened - everyone still loves you

The second is on me - I am going to revisit what is the best way to put some of that content back up (the old non-forum part of the site) and see if I can rope peeps into writing some new stuff. I'll also set up a new Photoshop comp in the next couple of weeks but you'll have to bear with me cos I'm am well busy innit at the moment