- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Hey guys, When I visit many web forums including Bungie’s, I’m reminded of a saying within Direct Marketing that goes, “The difference between a Great Offer and Junk Mail is Relevance to the Reader. In a forum context, this is the hundreds of threads that I am exposed to, but not interested in at all. They are just an obstacle to be overcome and significantly dilute the value of the Bungie site!
We are all signed on so it would be very useful to leverage our profile to drive meaningful content based on a user’s preferences. Here's a solution I hope you might consider that would be sensational!
"My Bungie"
The idea of My Bungie is a place that we can make home, "where Everything we are interested in can come to us." For many, it would be the first port of call when visiting Bungie.net: to keep track of things and look after business, before leaping out into the wide unknown of new threads and content on the rest of the site.
Topic management is a very difficult proposition for the average punter in these forums. With so many posts a thread disappears very quickly. Having an interest in a topic, there is really only one way to find discussions, that's page through one at a time and take pot luck on the subject titles. A lot of flame wards begin because people have dropped into a thread that they aren't interested in and just post negatively because they don't care about the topic and it saves wasting the time to get there.
Suggestions within "My Bungie"
"My Threads"
Today, most people probably use Add to Favorites to keep track of a Thread. That works but is still pretty primitive and has many limitations.
How about allowing us to Tag an interesting Thread and Save it to a list that we want to keep in touch with. It might be called "My Threads," with the link added to the right hand column. When you click the link, you would be presented with a list of threads (across forums) and their activity status. Example:
* I want to know if a thread has been active since I last visited
* I want to know if a Mod or Bungie employee has posted
* I want to know where members of my Bungie Group have posted
In the future, I might also be able to flag and be alerted if a certain person already within that thread has posted. (Because their view was interesting or noteworthy)
Threads By Topic:
Consider the advantage of a small mod to the Thread creation process to allow a person to "click" a predetermined classification of the topic, say Strategy, Weapons, Vehicles, GamplePlay, Forum Conduct, Humour, Cheaters, Tricks, Glitches ... whatever.. Then we could turn them on or off when we trawl the forums. There are a lot of people that will never visit some topics and they just clog the pages, preventing visibility of seeing posts that another individual might consider more interesting.
"My Searches":
I understand that Bungie is building a Search function for the forums.
From personal experience delivering large volume content publishing sites, the minute you release a Search function, the desire will be there to Save Searches to reduce the time and hassle to re-create them every session. These might be called "My Searches"
Allow us to Save the criteria of the Search function Bungie is building. Let us Name each Search, and make them available to us in "My Bungie"
Bungie News and Notifications
Here's a place to make any official announcements: about topics ranging from Forum Gossip, Products, DLCs, Bungie Site Maintenance,
The Benefits:
There are a range of benefits to both the punters and Bungie..
Benefit to the Punters:
We get a huge lift in the enjoyment from a trip to Bungie.net through better access to ideas, better contact with the people we find interesting and we save a huge amount of time that can be put into more posts.
Benefits to Bungie:
The payback for Bungie includes:
* A more a engaged community!
* Allows Bungie to increase contact with Users on a more relevant basis
* More detailed Content classifications allows greater segmentation of user behaviour and preferences,
* All of the above provide greater opportunities to more meaningful track user activity,
* Better leverage the user community for marketing input into product development and dare I say it.. promotion.
Well, there it is... My Bungie.. coming soon to a profile near you!! I'm sure Ideal Science would love to do it for you and a third year undergad student could do the business case.. So what do you say?