Thanks buddy.

Maybe people just irritate me. Or maybe it's their 9th post of the day about there new socks they just bought or to bitch and complain with absolutely NO chance of doing a damn thing about it. HA

I will still go on there once in a while to look up an old friend or family member to see what they have been up to. I try to stay off the news feed. They even call it the NEWS feed.

I use my FB account for hosting pictures and keeping in touch with a few friends. Beyond that I have no use for FB or IC. That said, I can see where a business needs to have a broad online presence and FB and IC are where the people are. But there are effective FB pages and ones that are not so effective. These days I think a business needs to have a smart mix of FB, IC and forum exposure. This online media thing can be very time consuming for any business, but I think it is a necessary evil of the times.

I dont have the Book of Faces or a Gram of Insta. I've cut down the online time drastically in the past couple of years and seems like I've got so much more time time to work on other things in life. But still check on the forums to see what the peeps are up to.

For me the transition of people away from forums is very sad. The period from say 2000 - 2010 was the Golden Age of technical information sharing. Then the smartphone came out and things went downhill.

You simply cannot share detailed technical information as well on a 3 inch screen as you can on something like 27" - 32". The fact that the world now gets most of its information through 3 inch screens will one day be seen as the start of the end of the "computer age" I feel. Smart phones are something different - gadgets really. And 90% of information consumed through these gadgets is pretty much useless in terms of learning anything new or interesting.

I used to try to promote engaging debates on Facebook, but slowly realized no one is really interested. They just want to post Memes and pics of their kids and pets. That's fine up to a point.

I've played with IG but it just does not light my fire. But I admittedly a 55 year old antisocial troglodyte 8^)

Bottom line - one can't beat a proper forum on a large-screen input device for learning things online.

Facebook for family and some friends.

I subscribed to a couple of car forums I can't get to otherwise but I am getting fed up with because of reasons listed.

I am about to turn 62 and for some reason people tend to piss me off on F.B. I don't get into politics or other sh!t because of all the arguing, I just love cars. WTF is wrong with people, I know some of them wouldn't say it to my face but on F.B. they go all out.

I like the community here, and a Torino forum I belong too. I don't always reply here but half the time I am LMAO at you guys ribbing each other...

Joe

I have to admit, that just recently I started visiting facebook more, but it's really just less than 20 people who are relatives or friends.

I find facebook, in some cases, appears to be about the 15 seconds of fame. "look at me now" "look at what I am doing/eating/where I am/my bling/etc."

Lots of people like that stuff

Quite interesting to hear now where a lot of the $$ invested in these types of things, really comes from.

On forums, except for a few strong ones, the majority have died off. There are a lot of strong personalities who trolled and flamed on some of the major forums I visited. They tend to PO many of the more "normal" people, so the forum's helpfulness gets devalued, and us "normal" people stop going.

All the more reason for strong forums to be well moderated.

If I enjoyed getting into arguments, that would be great, but it's no thrill.

anyway my 2 cents

I've noticed the big dropoff in forum participation too, including this one. Sad, because so much good information was shared. I don't really get how you are supposed to interact about car tech on IG or FB. I mean its fine if you are following a particular person or build but how does that help you figure out how to find the right main seal for your oddball motor or best approach to painting raw metal.

I don't have a solution though, I just keep randomly poking around the remaining forums when I have time. I guess I need to do my part and provide more content as well. I'm always building cool stuff but I take crappy photos they always make my stuff look like junk.

I think what I miss the most though is the professional builds from the Roadster Shop and Ironworks etc. Those threads always thrilled me, much harder to find that stuff by poking around. The Ironworks web page in particular only has 2% of the photos of their projects. I don't know if they have an IG feed or something where there is more stuff. The RS web site is good but I still miss the individula therads and comments from the owner. Rad Rides used t have a great photo gallery but their site sucks now too.

I am not on FB and I hate going on there to look at stuff, there is so much crap streaming everywhere and dumb comments and nothing seems to really stay in a coherent stream

You make a good point, we don't see a whole lot of the threads displaying the build threads from the top end shops. But we could certainly bring it back ourselves, start a thread specifically linking builds to their websites and then reposting the links when there's updates, I feel like I could do it relatively easy if it was what the people want.
Roadstershop and Detroit speed post a ridiculous amount of pictures on their sites weekly, they literally have social media and marketing staff in house now.

I have a heavy foot in social media so I feel like I keep up to date with most builds, but I don't think I see anything on the forums anymore.

hat off to Speedtech and a couple other shops who keep us informed here, that probably is the reason I now run their subframe.

There was only a very small number of cars kept a secret for SEMA this year, Detroit speed don't keep many secrets and roadstershop only hide the last month or two of their builds, ring brothers shared almost nothing on their AMX.
My thought is that they're dipping away from forums because social media is so much easier for mass coverage.

perhaps it's our job, the people of this thread, to bring it back

I used to love the forums for the same reason. Seemed like you could see stuff before it made the website. I still try to keep our website uploaded on a regular basis. I'm not sure where your looking on our website, but we post a ton of pics every month. We are little behind on the October pics because there are so many. Here is link to the September pics for the Fairway 67 -

http://www.ironworksspeedandkustom.c...rod/prd552.htm

I think builders went away from the forum for a few reasons. The guy who just has to try and point out something in an incomplete project to just look cool. I remember the UCA mounts on 50/50 some guy was like the tabs are only single shear that's never gonna work. Yeah neither will the fact its all only Tacked welded together at this point.

For me posting as many pics on our website as I possibly can is what I try to do. And we upload updates every month if that car gets worked on that month. We are also trying to work on less cars at any given time so we can get cars done at a faster pace. So your going to see less pics across the board and more pics of just one project.

I also think builders are just into different things now days then building themselves a pro touring car. I have desert race car I'm building and I ride my Mountain bike 50 miles a week. So I look on those forums more.

People are rude in General and I think it turns people off from alot of social media. I hate facebook, but think its a necessary evil for the world we live in. Instagram is alot more interesting but doesn't give much tech with out looking at alot of pictures. Our shops main focus is our website for content then Instagram. But the Instagram pics cross over to Facebook.

Rodger are all those photos contained in your normal "photo gallery" of finished and under construction projects ? Because those pages were what I was referring to as being lite on photos -the link you posted I'm not really seeing how I go to your site and see "latest photos" or anything like that. What am I missing ? (or do those photos just end up under a particular project and you just have t keep checking back ? )