Regarding the above debate about SN subscriptions, years ago there was the same debate oddly enough with some of the same people, well at least one actively engaged party, no prizes blah blah.

Much navel gazing was had with arguments going to and fro about what the Emporium could/should/would do. In the end I think SN executive management pronounced any “fix”wasn’t worth the bother nor cost.

Two ideas floated last time were to mark people’s username in such a way as to publicly indicate that they are a subscriber or to only allow subscribers to post forum comments.

I was logged out the other day and the ads were painful. Indo you must have rocks in ya head to be on here this much and put up with that,

Hey Ben
Is trigger brothers an an Australian site

haha, aww, that's cute.
Thanks again, blackers for introducing me to some amazing aussie music:

(sent me on so many great explorations into 'bands that were disenfranchised by the punk tidal wave')

Well if trigger brothers is an Australian site your panties need pulling down and you should be be given a bit of botty spanking for your liying

of course, the kings of above said genre in the UK, and a fave of many here:

Lex pubis wrote:

Hey Ben

Is trigger brothers an an Australian site

Trigger Brothers are a chain of surf shops, started by brothers Paul and Phil, the latter who shaped his first board back in '68. They opened their first surf shop at Chelsea in 1972 (before I was born!), and through the 2000's had 7 retail stores across Melbourne and the Peninsula (St Kilda, Sorrento, Frankston, Chelsea, Mornington, Pt Leo, Brighton).

That's fifty one years in business.

In addition to shaping, their primary business is standard retail - bricks and mortar, but also with an online component (shipping DTC etc). Apparently, at the height of their business, they were selling 30,000 pairs of tracksuit pants every year.

To the best of my knowledge, Trigger Bros have never had any surf forecasts on their website, nor produced any surf editorial.

However, Trigger has operated a small network of Victorian surfcams for many years, which I'd argue was setup as a marketing tool for the surf shop (a pretty smart idea, back in the early days of the internet).

That being said, most of their own cameras - even to this day - only offer still image frames taken at one minute intervals; technology which was made redundant decades ago (in 2005 Swellnet introduced streaming cameras at 25 frames per second).

In recent years, US-owned Surfline have done a deal with Trigger Bros, who have allowed them to take over access to a few of their camera sites, in exchange for upgraded camera vision (live streaming). I have no idea how long this arrangement will last for (Trigger Bros only have 2 retails stores now; Paul and Phil would have to be mid-70's) however I would expect that sometime in the near future, the camera vision will move over to Surfline exclusively.

Lex pubis wrote:

Well if trigger brothers is an Australian site your panties need pulling down and you should be be given a bit of botty spanking for your liying

Good luck getting a forecast from Triggers. Their website is simply one big ad, and the live streaming is provided by a US company. Buy a sub if you don’t want the ads.

GuySmiley wrote:

Regarding the above debate about SN subscriptions, years ago there was the same debate oddly enough with some of the same people, well at least one actively engaged party, no prizes blah blah.

Much navel gazing was had with arguments going to and fro about what the Emporium could/should/would do. In the end I think SN executive management pronounced any “fix”wasn’t worth the bother nor cost.

Two ideas floated last time were to mark people’s username in such a way as to publicly indicate that they are a subscriber or to only allow subscribers to post forum comments.

Not quite sure what you mean.

All day, every day, we are in various stages of planning, building and launching new features products or improvements on the site, of which the overall objective is to build our subscription service.

If that wasn't working, we wouldn't be in business.

As for the two ideas you've mentioned: "mark people’s username in such a way as to publicly indicate that they are a subscriber" and "only allow subscribers to post forum comments" - they both won't offer any material gain for the business (especially relative to the cost to design, build, test, launch, etc).

The first idea is simply shaming people into subscribing (something I don't feel comfortable with, let alone how ineffective I think it'd be), and the second would probably result in a net decrease in forum activity - something I feel would be detrimental to any value that the forum brings to the surf community.

Exactly, my intention was to just recall the history of a past discussion on the topic between contributors. No criticism of SN.

Ah, cool. Thanks.

basesix wrote:

haha, aww, that's cute.

Thanks again, blackers for introducing me to some amazing aussie music:

(sent me on so many great explorations into 'bands that were disenfranchised by the punk tidal wave')

No worries mate, as with (almost) all who contribute, sharing is caring.

I continue to get the best ads, and maybe the phones are telling the computers to deliver gems like this to my Swellnet screen:

https://www.temu.com/au/green-jaw-face-neck-toning-exerciser-for-women-…

Now you might be thinking like I was, wtf

But maybe there's a reason for this. The Ms has been re-watching '50 shades' recently (young one walks past: 'That's just porn'...) and so maybe this device is somewhat related? Can any of you guess the real use for this item?

The Young one has been Googling Butt Plugs

Don't click the link, people.

Not unless you want weird as hell ads appearing in your browser.

Cheers VJ.

Aww, So cute.

Just got an ad for snake safety training.

velocityjohnno wrote:

Just got an ad for snake safety training.

Haha, more useful than some others.