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[Realme]

Of course traffic is also down significantly from those days.

Any reason why?
Like in those old days internet wasn't that popular like it is now nor the speed were that great to have some discussion around it, I suppose more traffic should be now.

How was the forum back then and its community, whats was the discussion about mostly here?(from your perspective)

 

[Sushubh]

One of the algorithm changes in 2012 basically fucked up ranking of forum like sites. I got hit around the same time. Before that, traffic was quite intense. At one point of time I was paying close to 300 dollars for dedicated hosting. Now I run on a 6 dollar droplet.

This forum was initially started with focus on search engine optimization. Because that's what we did at that time (2004). And then I got Sify and it was so horrible that I started a section for it. It started getting visits from other Sify customers who were suffering. And that basically got me to pivot from SEO to Broadband Services.

BSNl and MTNL sections used to be popular along with Airtel. And than smaller players started arriving. ACT and Beam were quite popular. BSNL and MTNL sections I believe still have the maximum content even today on this website.

 

[Realme]

One of the algorithm changes in 2012 basically fucked up ranking of forum like sites.

I was always suspicious of google, but I am quite surprised because on first page useless, spam(bot-generated) are more than useful stuff

I was paying close to 200 dollars for dedicated hosting.

I suppose then it is income tax declaration worthy revenue

Well, thanks for the info @Sushubh

 

[Sushubh]

yeah. i mean i cannot blame google. their rankings were easily manipulatable back then. at one point of time i was able to rank above sify broadband's official website in search results. the problem today is that google gives way too much priority to big brands. which means that smaller players just cannot compete. this is even more relevant for bloggers who are actually creating content on their websites. for instance... if today, you break some important news on your website. and it goes viral. within a few hours 100s of popular websites would report on it. and your own website would basically be nowhere to be find for the content you posted first. and so on.

big brands abuse this. every single brand out there would launch a product in every possible segment of the market. leaving very little space for independent websites now.

this is why the focus moved to youtube. youtube (and similar video services) today is very much like google 10 years ago. it is very possible to start today on a video platform like tiktok or youtube and became a star in a matter of months.

 

[Realme]

I think if smaller viral-bloggr license their content under condition of link backs, they might be able to survive.
noadays google is either quora or reddit for forums in general, maybe specific niche topic-focused forums have come to their time

 

[Sushubh]

honestly, i have no idea how popular blogs not owned by big corp (like most blogs in developed markets these days) survive. most indian content seems to be supported directly by associated brands. if you are not supported by the brands of your target industry, you are probably an unknown entity. especially if you are a youtuber.

 

[Realme]

there was a time of geocities,wp,blogspot , uh nostalgia

Why didn't you took on internet branks or network brands, it might be quite lucrative for you?

 

[Sushubh]

lol. i have no idea how to respond to that question.

 

[Jonas]

At one point of time I was paying close to 200 dollars for dedicated hosting. Now I run on a 6 dollar droplet.

I remember the time when vBulletin really screwed things up. And you moved to IPB, and then to Xenforo because it was difficult to migrate without breaking anything, but damn! That's quite a shocker. You had a tech blog as well, what happened to that?

 

[Sushubh]

i actually fucked up the ipb to xenforo migration. all image code basically disappeared and i noticed it way too late. i mean i did not do anything wrong. the convertor script probably glitched during migration and did not process image codes properly. so posts from before xenforo no longer have images even if they exist and are still online.