Why bitcointalk.org is not as popular as it was in 2019

[philipma1957]

Let me share my own ideas. It started after the merit system came. Frankly, I left it at that time. This platform never made an effort to attract new users.

Why do you think Bitcointalk needs to attract more users?

Well more users means better paying signatures.

So it bitcointalk had 10x the users it had now I could earn more with a signature.

But there is more to bitcointalk than signature earnings.

more than casinos.

Reddit has a purpose

X is a joke

facebook is a joke

altcoinstalks has some value.

Does bitcointalk need to drain reddit telegram discord of all its viewers no

but they certainly would add to revenue .

I think what people do no realize is BTC is old news alts are old news

which certainly hurts bitcointalk active posting.

[BlackBoss_]

6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be

It is like this, it means Bitcoin has been going more nearly to main stream, and it's good for Bitcoin. The Bitcoin forum, if so, is already completed its most important mission, bringing Bitcoin to more people, to the world, and expand Bitcoin adoption.

If from now, Bitcoin can grow up more without this forum, is it good, isn't it?

I don't imagine that Bitcoin forum will die or disappear but with fast growth of blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, this forum will be covered by many altcoin forums. I don't say those forums are bigger, more important than Bitcoin forum, in fact they are not, but Bitcoin forum will still be valuable with many people in cryptocurrency industry especially Bitcoiners and Bitcoin maximalists.

[shield132]

After 6 years I came back to the forum. frankly I didn't intend to enter this thread. but I wanted to talk after a hero member commented on my previous post. this site is not as popular as it used to be. 6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be. what do you think the reason is. i may be wrong but this is my opinion

I think that Bitcointalk was very popular in 2016, 2017 and 2018, then it lost popularity a little bit. Bitcointalk was popular in those years because the web wasn't as advanced as it is today. Reddit's UI/UX was trash, Facebook was okay, twitter was okay. Many websites weren't responsive and Bitcointalk's UI/UX was okay for that moment. Forums also were very popular in those years. Bitcointalk was the one and only place to get the most for your business from your money. Bitcoin was less regulated, there was a boom of mixers, crypto casinos only had a few games and then everything changed, lots of crypto businesses became popular over time and it wasn't very necessary to be very active on Bitcointalk, so it slowly lost popularity but I think that this forum is still great and I'd say it's a better place than it was earlier.

[nutildah]

Why do you think Bitcointalk needs to attract more users?

Well more users means better paying signatures.

This is true, but its not for the sake of the forum; its for us. Bitcointalk doesn't need to do anything.

But there is more to bitcointalk than signature earnings.

more than casinos.

Agreed. As I've often said, today's primary function of the forum is to act as a repository for Satoshi's old posts, displayed in a manner very similar to the way they were displayed during the time of Satoshi. I will also add to this posts by Hal, Gavin Andresen & all the other early dev luminaries (including Vitalik). Since the forum has more funds than it knows what to do with, it doesn't actually need to do anything.

[Drawesome]

I believe this forum is a sacred place. A place where everyone from Satoshi to Hal Finney has participated, and where we even have the birth thread of Ethereum posted by Vitalik.

Every project worth its salt should be born here as a tribute to those who laid the foundations for all of this.

[Justbillywitt]

It's you who's saying the forum isn't as popular as it was in 2019. I can't understand why you're thinking the forum isn't as popular as before. If you're talking about the number of ppl visiting bitcointalk.org I'd like to see the stats you're looking at. There's other forums so ppl will naturally visit there but how's it making bitcointalk.org less popular?

After 6 years I came back to the forum. frankly I didn't intend to enter this thread. but I wanted to talk after a hero member commented on my previous post. this site is not as popular as it used to be. 6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be. what do you think the reason is. i may be wrong but this is my opinion

Do you seriously believe that the site is as popular as it used to be? My dear, I want you to open my eyes. Even in simple telegram crypto communities, there are more active people than here. Bitcoin's fame has increased, but it has not been reflected in the number of users here.

How can you compare Telegram and the forum? Anybody can dump whatever they think or come up with on telegram, but same can't happen here. The forum requires a bit of intelligence before you can survive it here. Here is a place where if you don't have something reasonable to offer you won't find it interesting. Here is a place for serious minds and not just for cheap airdrops hunters. Also in those your telegram communities you mentioned, hope you know there are thousands of scammers and bots, do you also consider those as active communities? At least here we have real people who are making use of the platform. The forum is holding up fine, just that you have been blinded with your sentiments. Instead of discrediting the work that the administrators are doing, why not stay put and make your own meaningful contributions. Than looking for someone to blame.

[Xylber]

Like said before, people is getting used to 10 seconds TikTok videos, and quick Twitter/Reddit comments.
ChatGPT solves basic doubts about BTC and there is no need search the forum.

Still, I prefer to read posts here, as the info elsewhere is too basic and very superficial.

[God Of Thunder]

After 6 years I came back to the forum. frankly I didn't intend to enter this thread. but I wanted to talk after a hero member commented on my previous post. this site is not as popular as it used to be. 6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be. what do you think the reason is. i may be wrong but this is my opinion

At that time, ranking up was probably easy because there were no merit requirements. I guess it was somewhere it 2017 or later when the merit system was introduced. Judging from the old threads, it seems accounts buying/selling was a good thing, even moderators were doing account trading at that time. So, there was a nice chance to make some money just by farming accounts.

Fast forward to this date, you must post quality content to get merit, and only then can you rank up. If you have a ranked up account already, that does not give you a guarantee that you will be hired in signature campaigns. No signature campaign - no money.

Also, I think people made a lot of money doing bounties at that time.

[KingsDen]

I believe this forum is a sacred place. A place where everyone from Satoshi to Hal Finney has participated, and where we even have the birth thread of Ethereum posted by Vitalik.

Every project worth its salt should be born here as a tribute to those who laid the foundations for all of this.

I share in your sentiment, the glory of this forum is the historical background of it. If anyone remembers that Satoshi discussed here, so also Hal and Ethereum emanated from here and some other historical events, they'll see the need to remain. Who knows if this forum will serve as an online museum in the future.

[Drawesome]

Like said before, people is getting used to 10 seconds TikTok videos, and quick Twitter/Reddit comments.
ChatGPT solves basic doubts about BTC and there is no need search the forum.

Still, I prefer to read posts here, as the info elsewhere is too basic and very superficial.

This is the problem. People are super lazy to register a forum.

[Majestic-milf]

You're incorrect, the traffic in bitcoin.com is bigger than bitcointalk.org, although the data wasn't updated since 2 years ago. But, for the other sites, then yeah bitcointalk.org is bigger than them.

what if after the update, their traffic generation can be equal to that of bitcointalk.org or even less? Like you said it hasn't been updated in the last two years and there's a lot that can happen in that space of time.

But, I'm not surprised to see bitcoin.com has bigger traffic because they're not a forum in the first place, they have many projects hence they can gather people to come into their sites.

Well that's another factor to be considered. Assuming it was just a forum and involved with other projects, will it amass this much popularity? Well, like you said, in terms of forum comparison, Bitcointalk.org has no competition.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

After 6 years I came back to the forum. frankly I didn't intend to enter this thread. but I wanted to talk after a hero member commented on my previous post. this site is not as popular as it used to be. 6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be. what do you think the reason is. i may be wrong but this is my opinion

What do you mean by not as attractive as it used to be, if you're referring to the earning privileges, the forum mightn't be as attractive as some of the projects that used to pay people through bounties are no longer attracted to the forum because there are better ways now to get the marketing out there.

As for the signature, some of the high playing projects has exited the forum because of the forum not wanting to associate with them for the fear of the government constant attack on them. We have more social media platforms today than 6 years ago so people have alot of choices were to go get their information from and hangout around like mind in the space. Also the popularity of the forum or would I say active users has reduced, but still the forum is functioning properly and we love it like that.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Despite the fact that most projects choose to prioritize the use of social media like "X", formally known as Twitter, Reddit and Discord to reach out to broader audience (i.e both crypto users and non crypto users). The truth of the fact still remains that bitcointalk remains the best avenue to reach out to dedicated Bitcoin audience that has got vast knowledge about everything regarding Bitcoin and altcoins.  And as such, I can confidently say that Bitcointalk now has got more users than 6yrs, when people literally had little or no knowledge and interest about it.

[Rikafip]

This is the problem. People are super lazy to register a forum.

Its not about the laziness, its about having a choice. Back in those early days there was no other place where you can discuss and follow anything bitcoin related, while now you have.

Whats left now are those old school forum users who were using forums long before bitcointalk was even created and some new like minded members who prefer this type of communication.

[dzungmobile]

It started to lose activities since merit system kick off in January 2018, and lost more since enhancement of merit system in September 2018.

Time Series on monthly statistics of forum (new users, new topics, new posts)

The trend is shown in Forum ads stat (impression).

[arabspaceship123]

If someone's returning to bitcointalk.org after 6 years they've got to expect the forum's changed. Users have a right to complain but what's the point. He hasn't told us where he's getting the stats from so we can't say anything. Why did he leave the forum for 6 years ?

[Z_MBFM]

After 6 years I came back to the forum. frankly I didn't intend to enter this thread. but I wanted to talk after a hero member commented on my previous post. this site is not as popular as it used to be. 6 years ago not many people knew about bitcoin and everyone who knew was also visiting this site. many people have discovered bitcoin and alt coins but this site is not as attractive as it used to be. what do you think the reason is. i may be wrong but this is my opinion

Earlier, people knew very little about Bitcoin, so there were very few articles about Bitcoin, social media posts, and private discussions with friends, which is why this forum created by Satoshi was one of the best ways to learn about Bitcoin. And that's why this forum was very popular then. Now Bitcoin and all other coins are discussed in different places on different social platforms in different articles and private messages etc.  So those who want to know about Bitcoin can easily collect the information they need from different places and that's why this forum is not as popular as before.  But as the day goes by the traffic here is increasing more and more.  Because earlier the number of users here was less but now it has become more than 3 million.

[dkbit98]

There are many factors for this and I can't single out one reason for this.
People this days are using forums less than in past and many moved to social media networks like twitter.
Most og members stopped using forum, some of them died, but Bitcointalk forum still remains most popular bitcoin forum, despite everything.

[Alone055]

This forum is doing pretty well for itself. We have enough traffic for a Bitcoin forum. What do you expect? Out of the world's population, barely 10% utilizes cryptocurrencies as of now, and I'm pretty sure that only a very small percentage out of that 10% knows about this forum, and those who don't even have any interest in cryptocurrencies, why would they visit or join a forum that is all about cryptocurrencies?

So, even if the traffic is lower than before, what we have is still not bad based on the level of adoption we have in the world right now. This forum is not a social media platform where you join, watch videos, see posts, get entertainment from visuals that people post; it's all text in here, you will barely see pictures and videos are not supported. So yeah, people these days are not very much interested in reading long texts or even writing any.

Those of us who are in this forum have been here for years, and we are here because we know this forum is the birth place for Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, we know the OGs used to be here, and we obviously are interested in textual discussions, so we are here. That is why, we can't compare the traffic of this forum with social platforms or other places over the internet. It all depends on interests.

[Lucius]

It started to lose activities since merit system kick off in January 2018, and lost more since enhancement of merit system in September 2018.
~snip~

In other words, when it became much harder for spammers to create alt farms and abuse sig campaigns, right? Somewhere around 2015/16 we had sig campaigns without managers, bots counted posts and paid automatically, and in the years that followed came the time of mixers which had pay rates several times higher than today. CM used to pay 0.0375 BTC for a maximum of 50 posts per week, later $300 for the same number of posts per week, and today there is not a single sig campaign that pays even close to that.

Money was (and still is) a big motivation for many to be active on the forum - although it must be admitted that the concept of a forum is not something that young people today even understand, they want speed, a million options and modern interfaces, and of course AI.