Viewing 2p2 from iphone/Android: Tapatalk

[LFS]

This is ALL my personal perspective, not that of 2+2. I'm interested in this purely as a user, so please take this as one user's opinion:

I've done some research on Tapatalk's and vBulletin's forums and I see a pretty major problem - Tapatalk makes money off of people buying the app, but I don't think it brings advertising along with forum content to Tapatalk users. In other words, what incentive do forum owners have to implement this? It could potentially draw users AWAY from visiting the forums via browser, costing them traffic and advertising $, while making somebody else money on the other end. Tapatalk either needs to deliver advertising along with content or somehow cut forum owners in on users they bring to Tapatalk. Because otherwise I can't see how it makes sense.

Again, nobody from 2+2 has stated that opinion to me, it's something I was wondering about and a subject that's been raised on vBulletin's forums.

[splashpot]

Originally Posted by LFS

This is ALL my personal perspective, not that of 2+2. I'm interested in this purely as a user, so please take this as one user's opinion:

I've done some research on Tapatalk's and vBulletin's forums and I see a pretty major problem - Tapatalk makes money off of people buying the app, but I don't think it brings advertising along with forum content to Tapatalk users. In other words, what incentive do forum owners have to implement this? It could potentially draw users AWAY from visiting the forums via browser, costing them traffic and advertising $, while making somebody else money on the other end. Tapatalk either needs to deliver advertising along with content or somehow cut forum owners in on users they bring to Tapatalk. Because otherwise I can't see how it makes sense.

Again, nobody from 2+2 has stated that opinion to me, it's something I was wondering about and a subject that's been raised on vBulletin's forums.

Yea I thought of that too. I feel like tapatalk should adopt a referral system. 2p2 would get their own referral code that they could advertise to their viewers. That was tapatalk gets advertising and forum owners are compensated proportionately for business they bring to tapatalk. They might have to increase the price for this to work but i would be fine with it.

[*TT*]

Originally Posted by sylar

what are the advantages of the upgrade, when will it happen, and exactly how is it incompatible? these may be workable issues. it'd be great if the admins would keep interested users in the loop on this.

these are not workable issues unfortunately, as Ryan pointed out the forum software is the priority, we don't want to add any add-ons that could hold us back, it wouldn't be in the best interest of the community.

+1 for LFS, I agree with his analysis. I think 2+2 would be willing to give it a shot though, if its not a conflict with our forum software development and future upgrades, because I hope there would be a residual side effect of driving more traffic to 2+2 via browsers. I am using the Facebook app as the model, Facebook's app is helpful but if I only used the App to access Facebook I would pull my hair out, in reality it encourages me to visit Facebook more often due to the slowness of the iPhone.

If and when we do implement a tool like Tapatalk we would of course have to notify our advertisers, we cannot afford to piss them off, and Tapatalk's lack of banner ad implimentation does mean there is at least some risk that an advertiser might be turned off by this idea, I assume that most if not all advertisers wont mind but you never know.

[IceMountain]

Well put *TT*.

Ryan, any idea of when the new software will be coming out? What is changing?

[Bobo Fett]

You're being replaced in ATF by this guy:

[MrCola]

Originally Posted by IceMountain

Ryan, any idea of when the new software will be coming out? What is changing?

It will be sooner than later, that's about as specific as I can get at the moment. It's just a version upgrade with a couple features and maintenance improvements. A lot of it is behind the scenes stuff, so you likely won't be noticing any huge differences. When we're ready to go I'll post the version changes list.

[Bobo Fett]

Ryan, are you only going to be installing Clippy, or will you include some of his friends, like Merlin, Rocky, and The Dot?

[MrCola]

Yes.

[Bobo Fett]

[IceMountain]

Bobo, looks like you've finally made some friends

[Bobo Fett]

Indeed...look at them all!

[cmyr]

A suggestion for something similar to think about along the same lines: I'm not sure how it would work with something being served dynamically, but it should be possible to write a fairly simple CSS theme that would be optimized for the iphone's screen, and would only be served to devices running Mobile Safari, e.g. iphones and ipod touches.

This is how most major sites serve iphone content. I'm not sure how feasible it would be in this case, but it might be worth at least thinking about?

[MrCola]

Yeah, that's the direction I'm wanting to go too. Much of this a bit held up by all the template changes in the coming version anyway, regardless of tapatalk. After that I'll be more free to work on my long delayed iPhone specific style.

[IceMountain]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


Thanks ry ry

[Omar Comin]

Hopefully if I annoy RB enough he'll do this.