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How About We Don't Delete Newsfeeds
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I’ve said for years that, yeah, it’s a free site, but no one eats or pays housenotes by working for a free site.
But people are wholly invested in “free”. Witness the outrage when scanning became part of a paid subscription.
OTOH, conversion rates are low because the subscription fee is so high, and the benefits for buying in are nominal. No ads. Yay! A scanning tool that’s reliable maybe 30% of the time (I know, crowdsourced entries yada yada). I can’t even think of any other benefits. Oh, you can download data to keep or share with medical personnel or trainers, , but the format it downloads in is utterly useless.
At least they don’t make you listen to 90 seconds of ridiculous, offensive ads like a photo editing app I paid for years ago, but seldom use unless in the utmost need.
I fully expect MFP to either go all subscription, or fade into the sunset.
I was a huge Ebay user and seller back in the day. They ignored their users, cue outrage, and the site is nothing to what it used to be. I had 10,000+ transactions there- and haven’t visited the site in years, they made me so angry. Feeling very Deja vu with MFP.
Anyway, I checked my friends count this morning. I keep it weeded out, and just did so a couple weeks ago, so my friends were all active users. My friends list has shrunk by a fraction under 10%. Others are preparing to leave by sharing various social media outlets where they can be found.
There’s a serious amount of resistance to groups, and people are either so utterly confused by the activity feed, or have found out with their first visit to it how cumbersome it is to use that they’re fleeing for (mostly) IG. They’re also angry enough that they’re moving to other, ironically and presumably paid calorie counting platforms.
This whole mess just bespeaks poor planning, and lack of interest in how users use the site.
If I’d spent a bazillion dollars to buy an app/website, you can damn well bet I’d have an account there and be poking around and engaging, and require several corporate office employees to do same.13 -
@Betty I’m getting reports from friends (via groups) that their feed is now gone and they can no longer access their friends list to send private messages.
We were assured the friends list would remain for this purpose. What’s the deal? Should we be writing down names of friends?
Heads up for yall who want to stay in touch with friends, in case this is not resolved.5 -
springlering62 wrote: »@Betty I’m getting reports from friends (via groups) that their feed is now gone and they can no longer access their friends list to send private messages.
We were assured the friends list would remain for this purpose. What’s the deal? Should we be writing down names of friends?
Heads up for yall who want to stay in touch with friends, in case this is not resolved.
Hi @springlering62, Yes the feed will likely start going away for folks. However the Friend's list should not be impacted. If anyone is having issues accessing their friends list please contact support by clicking on this link: https://myfitnesspal.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new or send an email to support@myfitnesspal.com with your device information, and exact problem and our support team will investigate.1 -
springlering62 wrote: »@Betty I’m getting reports from friends (via groups) that their feed is now gone and they can no longer access their friends list to send private messages.
We were assured the friends list would remain for this purpose. What’s the deal? Should we be writing down names of friends?
Heads up for yall who want to stay in touch with friends, in case this is not resolved.
Hi @springlering62, Yes the feed will likely start going away for folks. However the Friend's list should not be impacted. If anyone is having issues accessing their friends list please contact support by clicking on this link: https://myfitnesspal.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new or send an email to support@myfitnesspal.com with your device information, and exact problem and our support team will investigate.
Currently, I can see the feed, but can’t see my profile and can’t see the profiles of most of my friends.
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What a bunch of tone dead people run this world. You make the world a worse place5
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Maybe they expect us all to use the new wonderdrugs for weight loss in the future and they will adjust the site accordingly to not use their investment?1
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@springlering62 , thanks for the heads up, I just took a screenshot of my friends list.2
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Many of the accounts on here are bots or trolls and many accounts are stagnant. MFP should acquire a real business model and get rid of those unused and bot accounts..... like Google is finally starting to do. And have you noticed that folks on the community pages are now on the older side? You know, the group most interested in the News Feed feature? Seems like MFP is being lazy AND shooting themselves in the foot. Some good business opportunities for them if they would only consider their clientele and how to serve their needs by providing, or keeping, a unique product.5
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By the way — that link about MFP having 200 M users - is self reported from MFP.
“MyFitnessPal said it had 200 million users when it was sold by Under Armour to Francisco Partners.”
What constitutes a user? A download? Does it matter if the person is active?
—> How many people are active on the community boards of those millions?
It is also a fraction.. are the community boards being retired next since by the same logic - it’s a small number of users compared to the supposed # of millions?6 -
Allow me to offer a translation of Betty's post..
We are tired of breaking the news feed every time we upgrade our ad serving applications. The feed is too old and does not support current ad serving standards. Yeah we know you love it but if we cannot show you more ads then you might as well not be here. Come see your new activity feed with state of the art ads!
Anyone remember when users had blogs? They were insanely popular. So popular that MFP tried mixing their paid ad blogs in with them to get some accidental clicks. Did it work? Nope. So they took away the user blogs in the belief that users would start clicking on them if there was no competition from user blogs. Now all we have is ad blogs that absolutely no one wants to see.
Yeah, that was a sad moment when they took away the blogs.
There were so many great and inspirational ones out there. 6 -
Seems to me that the problem is that MFP has too many free users using free features. While I'm sure some people in the company feel less than good about pissing so many people off, what does it matter if users leave if they never paid in the first place?
Well.. the free, long term members, the ones who post educated feedback and suggestions in the forums, the ones who grab hold of new members (who WILL and DO pay) and help them along their way... they're a form of intellectual assets that you cannot value on a balance sheet.
I get that nothing is free... so run a poll to see how much people would be willing to pay for a news feed. I know that I won't pay a pile of money for micro tracking and all the extra features, but I would have been willing to pay a smaller annual subscription for a STABLE and USEABLE news feed, bar code scanner and reliable diary with macro tracking.
Give us options to pay something but not an astronomical amount. Create a tiered payment structure, and maybe you'd see some of that influx of dough that the stupid ads all over our newsfeed don't generate.
If you don't care about your free users, then find a way to soak them for a bit of coin and they can pay for your developers to do a better job of the feed.
I have been using mfp for free for 14 years (or more). I've made lifelong friends, they helped me through an abusive divorce, the loss of family, pets, children who were suicidal and struggling with chronic pain disorders. The news feed was THE ONLY safe place from my ex (who stalked me relentlessly) and the only place where I could truly be ME and still feel loved.
I am grieving the loss of that community now.
I just wish you would have asked us how much we'd have been willing to pay to keep it around. You might have been surprised.17 -
SafariGalNYC wrote: »By the way — that link about MFP having 200 M users - is self reported from MFP.
“MyFitnessPal said it had 200 million users when it was sold by Under Armour to Francisco Partners.”
What constitutes a user? A download? Does it matter if the person is active?
—> How many people are active on the community boards of those millions?
It is also a fraction.. are the community boards being retired next since by the same logic - it’s a small number of users compared to the supposed # of millions?
I've been wondering that too. Has anyone else noticed that the bots that used to come through the Feature Suggestions and Tech Support boards don't seem to be around lately? None of the "Great idea! I'll pass it on to the team!" and the "Apologies, please contact support" messages are popping up like they usually do. Makes you wonder if MFP is in the process of shutting the boards down as well.2 -
Don't delete newsfeed I like seeing the updates from my friends list whenever I log on 2
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SafariGalNYC wrote: »By the way — that link about MFP having 200 M users - is self reported from MFP.
“MyFitnessPal said it had 200 million users when it was sold by Under Armour to Francisco Partners.”
What constitutes a user? A download? Does it matter if the person is active?
—> How many people are active on the community boards of those millions?
It is also a fraction.. are the community boards being retired next since by the same logic - it’s a small number of users compared to the supposed # of millions?
I've been wondering that too. Has anyone else noticed that the bots that used to come through the Feature Suggestions and Tech Support boards don't seem to be around lately? None of the "Great idea! I'll pass it on to the team!" and the "Apologies, please contact support" messages are popping up like they usually do. Makes you wonder if MFP is in the process of shutting the boards down as well.
Just wanted to clarify that we aren't bots- every post you see from a staff member is a real person- and we have no plans or intention of removing our community forums.9 -
It is a common sense idea, but in the social media world things are a little different than that of the local entrepreneur. For instance Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all done well having billions of free users.KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Seems to me that the problem is that MFP has too many free users using free features.1 -
You all really just ignored the voices of your apps’s biggest fans. We stuck with you and accepted all of your faults. Also it’s not true that the newsfeed was not widely utilized because it was the middle button on the app for the longest time up until its quick and sudden death. What I think happened was something broke like it usually does and it was determined that the code (as simple as it was) was not worth the price of an actual fix.
Can we be real for a minute? Do the decision makers really think that MFP has the best forum or something? Because forums are not unique and have been around since the 90s. The apps best feature was the newsfeed because it allowed people to come together and build relationships. Without it, I think those of us heavy users just want something that gives us what you just took away. Are you all not paying attention? Thousands of people were active in the newsfeed daily.4 -
👋 Hi, just chiming in again to say I'm continuing to read and pass along your feedback.
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👋 Hi, just chiming in again to say I'm continuing to read and pass along your feedback.
Instead of just passing along feedback how about actually giving us some answers! Why is mfp already removing people’s newsfeeds? Why can’t we access our friends or our own profiles? Why will diary or exercises logged not post to our pages anymore? All these features being removed is the only reason many of us have stuck around. Get your *kitten* together and start listening to us!
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Hi y’all, Wanted to first acknowledge that saying good bye to any feature is hard, and I too am sad to see the Newsfeed ride off into the sunset. I do feel strongly that social interaction is important for a lot of folks on what can often be a lonely and difficult journey and having friends cheering you on can make a difference.
I’ll be transparent that the Newsfeed was one of our oldest features that had many flaws and was no longer sustainable to support. While it was not used by many we understand that it’s a real loss for those who used it.
While it is not perfect, due to some limitations like no friend or follow features in the Community, our team enabled the Community Activity Feed on profiles within the community as it was an existing feature available from our forum providers. Some of you may even remember seeing it briefly back in 2021 when we updated the Community.
The community profiles only have two options Public or Private, and the Private option makes the Activity Feed unviewable by others. The next best alternative to utilizing the Activity Feed would be to create a Private Group to invite your friends to and interact with them there.
I know these options don’t “replace” the Newsfeed by any means, but we hope they help give some members some options to interact with others outside of topic driven discussions.
Can we fix the newsfeed instead of completely scrapping it? The likes and comments were very supportive for me. Very sad and paying member :-(2 -
KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Seems to me that the problem is that MFP has too many free users using free features. While I'm sure some people in the company feel less than good about pissing so many people off, what does it matter if users leave if they never paid in the first place?
Well.. the free, long term members, the ones who post educated feedback and suggestions in the forums, the ones who grab hold of new members (who WILL and DO pay) and help them along their way... they're a form of intellectual assets that you cannot value on a balance sheet.
I get that nothing is free... so run a poll to see how much people would be willing to pay for a news feed. I know that I won't pay a pile of money for micro tracking and all the extra features, but I would have been willing to pay a smaller annual subscription for a STABLE and USEABLE news feed, bar code scanner and reliable diary with macro tracking.
Give us options to pay something but not an astronomical amount. Create a tiered payment structure, and maybe you'd see some of that influx of dough that the stupid ads all over our newsfeed don't generate.
If you don't care about your free users, then find a way to soak them for a bit of coin and they can pay for your developers to do a better job of the feed.
I have been using mfp for free for 14 years (or more). I've made lifelong friends, they helped me through an abusive divorce, the loss of family, pets, children who were suicidal and struggling with chronic pain disorders. The news feed was THE ONLY safe place from my ex (who stalked me relentlessly) and the only place where I could truly be ME and still feel loved.
I am grieving the loss of that community now.
I just wish you would have asked us how much we'd have been willing to pay to keep it around. You might have been surprised.
This, I'd be willing to pay for premium if the standard app/website wasn't a complete glitch-fest. Half of the time I see the stupid strawberry error page. So why would someone put up money on a questionably stable app?4
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