Forums dead now?

[JohnArbuckle]

Older guys get their hair transplants, successful or not, and move on. Younger guys favor reddit b/c voting on comments is the new trendy thing, the web development is a solid MEAN stack so it is very fast, and its easier for them to branch into a new subreddit than join a new forum.

 

For better or worse, subspecialty forums across the board taken 2nd fiddle to the megaforum mosh pits.

 

That being said, this is still the best resource on the net for patient submitted cases and surgeon reviews. BT is a joke and the other forums focus more on medical tx. Spend any time on Reddit and you quickly realize that, while amusing, its little more than a bunch of 20 year old kids barely scratching the surface of hair restoration. No depth.

[Spanker]

Older guys get their hair transplants, successful or not, and move on. Younger guys favor reddit b/c voting on comments is the new trendy thing, the web development is a solid MEAN stack so it is very fast, and its easier for them to branch into a new subreddit than join a new forum.

 

For better or worse, subspecialty forums across the board taken 2nd fiddle to the megaforum mosh pits.

 

That being said, this is still the best resource on the net for patient submitted cases and surgeon reviews. BT is a joke and the other forums focus more on medical tx. Spend any time on Reddit and you quickly realize that, while amusing, its little more than a bunch of 20 year old kids barely scratching the surface of hair restoration. No depth.

 

Tressless is the only subreddit I've seen that has much activity. They are younger on average. The best thing about there is that a LOT of them post finasteride gains on there, so its pretty cool. They aren't super transplant informed. Dr. Rassaman is a regular contributor there.

[Bill - Seemiller]

Interesting discussion and frankly, I'm glad someone started it. Gillenator made an excellent post on this topic on the first page which in my opinion, summed it up pretty well. That said, as the managing publisher of this community who can see all the back end traffic and participation, I can tell you that traffic has been pretty steady as has participation. Some topics clearly seem to garner more interest which is why a topic like this is already 3 pages long while a simple question about "which doctor" that's been answered hundreds of times before may not have as many replies.

 

To piggy back of Gillenator's comments, there will always be a need for the free exchange and flow of information. Social media has taken some of that over but discussion forums are still very popular and necessary. I was actually reading an article the other day about the pros and cons of starting a discussion forum on your website vs a Facebook "group" which enables members of Facebook to discuss a topic in a closed, private section of Facebook, and despite the popularity of Facebook, discussion forums won hands down for a number of reasons. For starters, Facebook groups aren't indexed and somebody using Google to search for a particular topic won't find a Facebook group let alone the actual post. Discussion forums are indexed, each topic has their own URL, topics are categorized and it's easier to find information.

 

Blogs too are becoming increasingly popular. Frankly just about anyone starting a website is advised to have an active blog to help get the word out about them on the web an Social Media.

 

Social media is interesting though because while it seems great for some topics and businesses, it seems to flounder for others. For instance, to date, most people don't want others to know about their hair transplant and wouldn't want their "friends" on Facebook seeing that they "like" hair transplant or hair loss related pages and/or are members of these types of groups. Facebook also eliminates anonymity unless you create a fake Facebook account, which of course, is highly frowned upon.

 

To go back to the point though, discussion forums may have lost a little bit of traffic simply because of the dilution on the web. There are so many new websites containing information about hair transplant surgery that people aren't finding the forums as easier as they used to. Google continues to change their search algorythms too which is both good and bad. The problem is, nobody knows exactly how to keep their website on the front, cutting edge of the web and so we often have to guess, and then work to make changes that take many months and sometimes over a year to accomplish.

 

The one thing we've been working on is making all of our websites mobile friendly. This is taking some time, but to date, the Hair Transplant Network and our primary blog, the Hair Loss Q&A Blog are mobile friendly. We are currently working on the Hair Loss Learning Center and will be working on the hair loss forum next.

 

To sum up, the forums are far from dead and there's still a plethora of discussion happening here every day. We also have a large number of people online viewing the forum even if not as many people are posting on a particular day.

 

I would however, like to see more participation on the forum in general because the more everyone participates, the more others will benefit from the information presented.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[Bill - Seemiller]

baldfornow,

 

Where is your blog? Did you create a patient website on our community at www.hairlossweblogs.com?

 

Bill

[Bill - Seemiller]

Sean,

 

We have a blog, don't you know? It's at www.regrowhair.com? You can even find a link to it on the right hand sidebar :-).

 

Bill

[JohnArbuckle]

Tressless is the only subreddit I've seen that has much activity.

 

From the time I've spent on there, there does not seem to be a strong single subreddit, but rather each new post gets diluted into its own individual stream. Really impedes substantial depth from being generated. Some of the AMA discussions are decent, but overall its akin to trying to have a philosophical discussion in the middle of the mosh pit at an EDM rave.

[Swooping]

It does seem that forums overall get less crowdy. HLH used to flourish and so did BTT, both pretty much dead now.

[gillenator]

Social media may have more implications than we think...:rolleyes:

[Swooping]

Social media may have more implications than we think...:rolleyes:

 

Yeah, very good point Gillenator, I agree that social media probably has a big impact.

 

Hopefully, this trend won't continue as the best information is found on forums like these imo.

[Vpac]

I was on these forums religiously researching and reading up before I had my HT. It was due to the reviews posted by people on this forum and the information available that I chose my doctor, so I can't thank the people and this platform enough.

 

Also, I pm'ed many of the people who had posted their own stories with the same doctor I went with so a lot of the posts and info I gathered was through private messaging.

 

Having said that, once I had my HT and around 4-6 months post-op, the last thing I wanted to do was spend even more time on a hairloss website because I wanted to move on and enjoy my life with my new hair. I had spent a lot of time and energy beforehand whilst I was researching that I needed a break from thinking about hair loss, and focus on other parts of my life.

 

I do like to visit the forums now and then to keep up to date with any new developments, whether any new doctors have been recommended and look at before/afters.

[Vainism]

There are two types of people.

 

1 - Low vibration energy - you learn, you take and you move on.

 

2 - High vibration energy - you learn, you take and you give back to the community.

[BaldDude]

@paleocapa89 @paleocapa88 update?

[Melvin- Admin]

Five years later, I think we’re the most popular we’ve ever been! 

[BaldDude]

I can only assume Paleo had a decent result.

[Melvin- Admin]

1 hour ago, BaldBobby said:

I can only assume Paleo had a decent result.

Why are you posting that here, this isn’t his thread. You can look up his thread on his profile. 

[BaldDude]

9 minutes ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

Why are you posting that here, this isn’t his thread. You can look up his thread on his profile. 

cuz I couldn't find his 1-year result photos

[gillenator]

Possibly he is happy and just moved on.