We currently have 555 members registered... (June 20 2007)

[askal]

Wow. Thats alot of "lonely" people.

I wonder how accurate is that number? What about considering:

1) The ultra-shy lurkers who just read this board but dont post anything and dont register either

2) The unregistered posters

3) Multiple accounts

4) Spam accounts (refinance the viagra and all that crap)


Like seriously... why so many lonely people?

 

[Robin]

500 is nothing. Depression due to solitude is the most common illness in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if this website reached 500,000 members if it was even lightly advertised.

 

[bjarne]

I agree with Robin, 500 is really nothing compared to how many lonely people there really is.

Out of all the registered members there's probably somewhere between around 50 unconfirmed accounts. I will do some cleaning of that when I get the time (ie. delete the accounts in question).

Also, of course, there is a lot of accounts with no posts (dont know how many). That's perfectly fine. But eventually, I dont know yet, I may delete very very old in-active accounts (I can see when an account was last online etc.). I will never delete an account that has made at least one post.

I wouldn't be surprised if this website reached 500,000 members if it was even lightly advertised.

As for reaching a larger percentage of all the lonely people out there. Please post on the feedback forum if you have any ideas. It has to be cost-effective (notice how the site, currently, sports absolutely no ads whatsoever...)

 

[Robin]

As for reaching a larger percentage of all the lonely people out there. Please post on the feedback forum if you have any ideas. It has to be cost-effective (notice how the site, currently, sports absolutely no ads whatsoever...)

I'd love to help You, Bjarne. I don't know how experienced You are with online advertising and search-engine optimizations but i could probably help in some way. I'm gonna be busy most of the day forward but i promise to write a note to myself and get back to You on how we perhaps can make alonelylife.com easier to find.

 

[Robin]

Bjarne, did You get my mail or did it get filtered out with the junk or something? I sent You one at least, just so You know.

 

[bjarne]

Bjarne, did You get my mail or did it get filtered out with the junk or something? I sent You one at least, just so You know.

Hi,

I got it.I will get back to you as soon as I get the time (within this week).Thank you.

 

[askal]

try posting it on craigslist

 

[lonelygirl]

Askal, great idea! However, there are some nasty people on the Rants n Raves of Craigslist so you should perhaps think about how to keep out spammers and trolls, Bjarne.

 

[Robin]

Hmm, i think it'll be really hard to ever get rid of spammers and bots once they've found Ya, and they are pretty skilled at doing so. Optimizing the pages for search-engines would be a great, first step, so people find us and not bots. If everyone here would post around everywhere and submit the site to different lists then this place would have more spammers than lonely people. I'm surprised i haven't seen anything suspicious yet.

 

[lonelygirl]

Robin,

Do you know of any ways to help keep this site positive, friendly, and supportive? We've had a bit of troll action so far but not enough to destroy the place.

 

[i_dunno]

I think 500+ is a good number. By the way, we are approaching 600 today. As far as advertising goes, it is really appealing but it's got to raise questions about maintaining the quality of posts on the site. Not that I have posted a lot, but I think the forums can get abused if it's widely advertised. You might even have to adopt a new policy on guest access to posting in the forums, since there are already people posting rude and insulting comments as guests and this is likely to increase if the site is more well-known.

I also think we should all thank Bjarne for setting up this site. Like I said, I don't post a lot, but I reead the posts and see a lot of positive things coming out of it, even in forums where people disagree. It's just an all-around good idea.

Thanks Bjarne!