IS ADULT FRIENDFINDER IN ITS DEATH THROES?

Aerikvon's Death Throes by AerikVon:

Having returned to Adult FriendFinder (AFF), part of FriendFinder Networks, about three weeks ago after my ban, I'm starting to believe that the site is now in its death throes.

Though the blogs I follow cannot be regarded as representative of blogland, my list of followed blogs cover a lot of bloggers who actually blog as opposed to posting photos of porn without text or posting hook-me-ups. Before my ban, my guess is that I would have received on average about a hundred alerts each day. Given I haven't submitted a blog post since my return and my blog posts, which would have perhaps attracted on average about 25 comments, and given I don't submit too many comments nowadays, I should now expect about 50 alerts per day. But the number of alerts I receive are no more than about 20 each day. That is a significant decrease in the number of alerts I'm now receiving from what I used to receive.

My observation is that bloggers (at least those I follow) are blogging less and even no longer blogging. My followed feed is now a trickle. And looking at the new feed, I'm getting the impression that there are significantly fewer porn-only and hook-me-up blog posts.

I also get the impression from the tone of the postings is that more bloggers are being critical of the site. And I'm not just thinking of bloggers who used to be critical but also bloggers who weren't particularly critical of the site before my ban.

The recent move to nudge standard members to upgrade to paying gold or at least use points to enjoy certain features that used to be enjoyed for free seems to be a tipping point for many bloggers. My impression is that standard members aren't tempted to pay and upgrade. In fact, I know of a few bloggers who were gold and have decided to let their membership lapse to standard.

AFF's latest move to monetise (or at least pointisise) seems to be failing. My guess that it's failing because the site doesn't offer a good enough 'product' to tempt standard members to pay and upgrade.

AFF doesn't seem to be seriously making any efforts to improve the site for its members, and it hasn't ever since Jon Buckheit got rid of Andrew Conru. Since Andrew's 'departure', the site has rapidly gone downhill towards the gutter of becoming Craigslist on steroids. And by the way, I'm not an apologist of Andrew. He had his faults, a man in a hurry, but at the very least he made himself known to members, particularly bloggers, and listened to concerns, both something that Jon Buckheit doesn't do. But I know whose side I'm on. Andrew all the way. And that realistically is the only choice in town.

One concern that's been repeatedly relayed to AFF for a long time is the arbitrary denial of blog posts, comments and replies by so-called Tier 1. AFF has done nothing to address this problem. Its latest offering from the mouths of Jon Buckheit and Ali R is that members can request a second review by a different Tier 1 reviewer. This offering isn't that different to what is already on offer. Bloggers, if their posts were denied, could always ask for their posts to be re-reviewed and quite often this second review would be undertaken by a different Tier 1 reviewer. Basically, AFF's proposed solution is that bloggers can ask for a second review of any denied comments and replies to be re-reviewed. The proposal is not such a big deal.

And just to show how unserious the offer is from AFF, the site hasn't implemented its proposal, something which isn't difficult to implement. But AFF, something slightly more difficult to implement, has quickly introduced a range of measures for standard members to either pay money or use their points to carry on using existing features. This says everything about how Jon Buckheit's AFF operates.

It won't surprise me that AFF will start monetising or pointising blogging. It's that desperate. It's clear that AFF isn't making much money, admittedly it never has been that good at making money. But what AFF is doing now is the last throw of the dice. Or maybe, Jon Buckheit is trashing the site so he doesn't have to pay out so much compensation if and hopefully when he loses that court case to Andrew.

I get very little pleasure at writing this blog post because I want AFF and, in particular, AFF's blogland, to still be around if and when Andrew wins that court case. And if and when that happens, the blogging party can start, but it needs bloggers still to be around to have a party with!

Hercules, in his Death Throes, Hurling Lichas into the Sea: