Quote Originally Posted by HB Vic View Post
While I agree with the keyboard cowboy part, unfortunately much like traditional paper magazines, I believe the forum style websites will eventually go in the same direction. Extinct. Lol. Even some of the third party app people like Tapatalk are styling their apps like social media websites. Tapatalk now has a "timeline" feature. And Tapatalk is now loaded with ad's, unless you pay for the non-ad feature.

But again, none of the social media style sites capture ad dollars so that those dollars trickle down to the guy racing his boat or the promoter promoting his event. Facebook and Instagram don't send checks to sponsors or promoters or racers. They keep every dollar.

Traditionally, the forum style websites survived on ad dollars. Exposure, hits, traffic, etc. are what gets those advertiser dollars. The advertisers don't necessarily care who gets their dollars as long as they're getting the exposure for their buck. This is the rub. If you're an advertiser and you have to choose between a website that has to earn their traffic, or a social media website where people simply flock to, who are you going to send your dollars to?

Its a no brainer in my opinion. And unfortunately we (boaters) lose. I think the future holds fewer and fewer smaller boating events. And I also see fewer and fewer larger boating events. Because boating does not have the TV coverage traditional events have (nascar, motocross, etc) there really is no mechanism in place to capture advertising dollars. And social media won't be spreading the wealth anytime soon.

I see a drought in the near future. It will be interesting to see if anything can be done to keep the flow of dough flowing to the people who put on the show
good point... R.O.I.