AngelsWin.com Today: AngelsWin.com: New Again (Breaking free of the Twitter & Facebook cesspool)

[AngelsWin.com]

By Geoff Stoddart, AngelsWin.com Director of Social Media (better known as: @Spirit)

In February of 2004, Chuck Richter, launched the AngelsWin.com site and community forum as a place for Angels fans from around the country and around the world to come and discuss not only the team they loved, but also a wide array of topics that interested them.  As the community grew, the forum became the go to place for Angels fans on the internet to call their home discuss their team.

In the years that followed, two small websites became publicly available and changed the way the world interacted online.  Twitter in July 2006 and Facebook in September 2006. 

It is impossible to overstate the immense impact both of these social media platforms have had on the world we live in.  At first, they appeared to be a pioneering leap forward in allowing people to connect and reconnect with others on the internet. Family members, long lost friends, sports heroes, entertainers and the list goes on.  People shared their photos, stories of their kids, animals, dates and jobs with anyone who was willing to follow them and give them a like.  It started off all so promising. 

But like many things in life, too much of a good thing can often turn ugly.  Such has been the case with both Twitter and Facebook. 

How many times have you logged onto one of these platforms looking for Angels news and/or discussions, only to find yourself having to weed through endless amounts of drama, politics and hate?  If you said, “every time,” then you’re being honest.

As fans of the website slowly began transitioning over to the social media platforms, AngelsWin joined them.  We’ve had fun with discussions, memes, meltdowns and the like.  But over the last couple of years, we’ve seen interest wane.  People are getting tired of these internet cesspools.  And that’s caused something of a shift for our website.  What was old is suddenly becoming new again!  The AngelsWin community forum has continued to see a steady resurgence in activity. 

So, why is this happening?  Why are people migrating back to a format that has been around since the 90’s?  Well, the answer is pretty simple.  They want to engage without having to weed through the madness.

The AngelsWin community forum has everything you want from your ideal social media platforms.  A place for Angels baseball, a place for sports of all kinds, a place for politics, a place for general nonsense, and the list goes on.  But the great part about these forums is that they’re all separate from each other.  You don’t have to engage in a discussion about Ohtani’s recovery, while also having to read that someone thinks <insert politician’s name here> is a Nazi all the while getting a creepy or spam filled DM by strangers.

There are other benefits too …

·        You can easily search for topics or posts from days, weeks or even months before. (Try doing that on Twitter or Facebook)

·        We don’t mine your data and sell it to horrible people who will do horrible things. (I’m looking at you, Facebook!)

·        AngelsWin contests and prizes

·        Fanfest events with former and current players

·        Intelligent discussion threads that are moderated to filter out and hide any trolling that would derail the topic or disrespect others. 

·        Angels live Gameday threads & chat with fans, as well as up to date prospect updates and in-game stat lines through the major and minor league season.

·        Full access to our members gallery to upload & share pictures, calendar, private clubs to discuss topics in a group setting, private messaging & chat (coming soon).

·        Easily embed .Gifs just like on Twitter, upload images and videos, and we offer a full set of emoji's to share with the entire community. 

·        We have more than just the Facebook LIKE or Twitter Heart reaction. So take that!

·        Our mobile experience is modern, responsive and rivals all the popular social media apps out there. 

·        We have exclusive High Definition video interviews with front office members, both active and former players, as well as our top minor league talent. 

·        Angels news quickly populated to our forum via an RSS feed from the OC Register, including interaction & Q&A with Angels' beat writer @Jeff Fletcher.

·        While user accounts are always free, an upgrade to our Premium Member status provides you with an ad free experience.

 So if you’ve never been to AngelsWin.com before, come give us a try!  And if you were a member who has fallen away, come give the site another look. We think you’ll be very happy with what you find! 

The AngelsWin Community Forum … it’s new again!

 

 

[Chuck]

Thank you for this write-up, @Spirit.

Feel free to share this article with your Angels fan friends/family guys! Or with your staunch social media peeps that have either only known Facebook and Twitter for Angels talk, or were never fans of a forum/message board because they're just too old and outdated. 

[Spirit]

It's time to rid ourselves of the social media shit show, people!  Bring it back home to AngelsWin! 

Tell a friend!

 

 

[nate]

This is kinda ironic.  

 

[Spirit]

7 minutes ago, nate said:

This is kinda ironic.  

 

 

Hey, you don't go to a beach club to sell snow boots.

 

 

[Chuck]

23 minutes ago, Spirit said:

Hey, you don't go to a beach club to sell snow boots.

[Chuck]

I'd also like to add that the mobile experience for the forum is much improved which is good considering 47% of our members and guests visit via a mobile device per the stats. 

[Docwaukee]

[Spirit]

12 hours ago, Chuckster70 said:

I'd also like to add that the mobile experience for the forum is much improved which is good considering 47% of our members and guests visit via a mobile device per the stats. 

 

Damn!  I should have included more about this in the piece.

 

 

[Chuck]

38 minutes ago, Spirit said:

 

Damn!  I should have included more about this in the piece.

 

 

I added that and a couple more features to the original blog piece here: https://www.angelswin.com/blogs/

 

[yk9001]

So what was happening on fb and twitter?

If it was a shitshow, I'm kinda sad I missed it.

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, yk9001 said:

So what was happening on fb and twitter?

If it was a shitshow, I'm kinda sad I missed it.

The political partisanship part of it has gotten waaaaay out of hand.

[Chuck]

1 hour ago, yk9001 said:

So what was happening on fb and twitter?

If it was a shitshow, I'm kinda sad I missed it.

Basically what @Angel Oracle said. That if you're solely looking at Twitter and Facebook for Angels news and talk, you're going to have to filter through a bunch of nonsense and political back and forth, not to mention sifting through people's personal drama and other garbage you're not interested in. 

Here, you can pick and choose what you want to see and discuss. The activity stream view is the way to go too, as I documented here: 

 

[Chuck]

3 hours ago, Spirit said:

Damn!  I should have included more about this in the piece.

I included a couple more (here and on the original blog piece). Always remembering stuff to add to an article after it has been posted. lol

[UndertheHalo]

Obviously dodger fans are not welcome. 

[Duren, Duren]

Good story. I'm relatively new here and didn't know the history and evolution of the site. 

I prefer keeping sports forums away from social media embedding. The hockey and football forums I use were also fairly benign, though they both recently migrated to Tapatalk. Which I do not like. Especially since I was on those Forums for over twenty years. All the permutations they went through were more user friendly and less intrusive. 

I don't mind explicit ads, because they are necessary for financial purposes and can easily be scrolled past. But it is damned creepy the way Facebook spies and personalizes the advertising. I only use it to keep casually in contact with distant friends and family. I never used Twitter, though sometimes follow links. 

But to get back to this site, it's very enjoyable to see all the in depth reflections about Angels history past and present . I had almost given up on finding a solid forum with consistent intelligence and insight going beyond what happens in the next game. That stuff is great too, but especially in the off season it's fun to reflect on the history of the franchise and how the present measures up to the past. 

[Chuck]

5 minutes ago, Duren, Duren said:

Good story. I'm relatively new here and didn't know the history and evolution of the site. 

I prefer keeping sports forums away from social media embedding. The hockey and football forums I use were also fairly benign, though they both recently migrated to Tapatalk. Which I do not like. Especially since I was on those Forums for over twenty years. All the permutations they went through were more user friendly and less intrusive. 

I don't mind explicit ads, because they are necessary for financial purposes and can easily be scrolled past. But it is damned creepy the way Facebook spies and personalizes the advertising. I only use it to keep casually in contact with distant friends and family. I never used Twitter, though sometimes follow links. 

But to get back to this site, it's very enjoyable to see all the in depth reflections about Angels history past and present . I had almost given up on finding a solid forum with consistent intelligence and insight going beyond what happens in the next game. That stuff is great too, but especially in the off season it's fun to reflect on the history of the franchise and how the present measures up to the past. 

Thank you for the kind words, @Duren, Duren. I completely agree with you. In fact, the only reason I signed up for Facebook back in 2008 and Twitter a bit after was to promote what we're doing here. The tapatalk app is awful. I almost went that route years ago until I discovered this forum software, which I purchased. WORTH EVERY PENNY! 

For more on the website's history, check out our about us page: https://www.angelswin.com/about-us/

 

[tdawg87]

Oh God the Angels FB page...

[cysomeawfulpitcher]

I got banned from posting on the FB page for daring not to be a pollyanna...as well as jail many times under my main and sock account for showing no mercy to deplorables on FB in general.

 

I just use Instagram now.  Screw Cuckerberg.

[Lou]

yeah, I'm sure that was the reason

[ten ocho recon scout]

On 10/25/2019 at 11:36 AM, Angel Oracle said:

The political partisanship part of it has gotten waaaaay out of hand.

Not to get off topic in a thread that is about why this place has gone old school, but yeah, social media (FB especially) has died because of that bullsh*t.

I dont care if you hate/love trump/obama/bush, i dont care what pissed you off today, and dont need a picture of your food.

Please go back to when I could just creep old girlfriend pics and pics of women who friend zoned me, thanks.

(Edit. I do love memes).

[Jay]

I get that Twitter and Facebook are cesspools...

But how is AW "breaking free" of that?

 

[Tank]

10 hours ago, Lou said:

yeah, I'm sure that was the reason

I'm guessing he posted one of his memes and that was that.

[red321]

22 hours ago, cysomeawfulpitcher said:

 

I just use Instagram now.  Screw Cuckerberg.

Anyone want to point out who owns Instagram?