Where new users come from.

Over the last week I worked on a more or less accurate statistic about where our new users come from. For that reason I sent private messages to all users who joined the forum over the last month. Since not everybody replied this statistic obviously isn't a hundred percent accurate. The verdict:

Spore Community         81%
Reddit                         0%
ModDB                        0%
Friends                       9.5%
Others                        9.5%



As you see, our main source of newcomers still is the Spore community, mostly people looking for mods to make Spore more realistic. Our second largest source: Users who tell their friends about Thrive. This is a source wich,like I think, has quiet some potential since it's easy to expand. If something is suggested by a real-life friend it seems much more trustworthy and interessting. It also seems less like begging for attention because if you know someone in person he can convince you easier than some random comment under a Spore video (that's how I had my first contact with Thrive. My idea in a nutshell: Tell your friends about Thrive, especially if you know they might be interessted in something like this. But before running outside and shouting out, I would recommend to wait until an admin tells what he thinks about this. I hope this helps in some way to give some insights about our current situation.
-MirrorMonkey2

Quite interresting! how many people were asked?

I would have expected more people to be from reddit, as thats where i found my way here myself, didn't really expect spore to be very active anymore.

crovea wrote:

Quite interresting! how many people were asked?

I would have expected more people to be from reddit, as thats where i found my way here myself, didn't really expect spore to be very active anymore.

It's still quite active.

Even if the community has degraded to a point of 75% being hacked, or double acounts, mixed in with people who cyberbully random users, and those who 'downrate' other players' creations to "fight the Power" and get the crappier things featured on the websites 'Most Popular New' section.

There used to be some fairly well-done stuff there, even with the limited resources. But now, it's full of cells, which BTW, cannot be published without hacking, and strange grotesque 3D forms of children's drawings. And multi-colored middle fingers made from vehicle parts.

It is really quite sad, as I used to be a very active member of the Spore community. Though i found my way here from the speculative evolution forums, while searching for info on some of NemoRamjet's stuff.

crovea wrote:

Quite interresting! how many people were asked?

In the current statistic only 11 people are included since nobody else replyed, but I have 4 more yet and plan to update the statistic every 5 users so it gets more accurate over time. The Spore-part seems to grow even more...

This is interesting, considering that the official spore forums have been offline for a few years now (although there is a strange Meta-Wiki about them which does mention Thrive and link to us). This is interesting work, Mirror. I'll update soon with some analytics about general site traffic.

~sciocont wrote:

This is interesting, considering that the official spore forums have been offline for a few years now (although there is a strange Meta-Wiki about them which does mention Thrive and link to us). This is interesting work, Mirror. I'll update soon with some analytics about general site traffic.

I don't really like talking this way to a community mod/founder, but I'm afraid you are incorrect. I was on the Sporum just this morning and it was functioning perfectly. Maybe you just happened to be there at the wrong time.

This is great! Come to think of it, doing some statistical analysis of the team's origins and makeup could be quite useful, both in the short term to discover neglected sources, and in the long term when it comes to narrowing down a target audience and 'selling' to them. If we add our other members to the statistics as well and plot them against the time they joined, it may lead to some intriguing results. It might also be a good idea to add other sources - I came across Thrive from YouTube for example, and I know many others did as well.

@Aquos4
While the Sporum does still exist, its activity is negligible and has been for a long time (which is probably what ~scio meant when he said they were offline). I actually know this for a fact from browsing a couple of its threads about Thrive, on one of which someone mentioned that Thrive's forums are probably around three times more active than the Sporum. Which, when you think about it, is quite a feat for a project such as this.

Oliveriver, are you saying that we should conduct a forum-wide survey and then classify the sources based on the year? If so, I agree.

Yes, although by year may be too large an interval as Thrive's only been around for a few.

Yeah, maybe by 6 months?

That might work. The join dates for all users are listed on their profiles (though for those who were involved with Thrive before this forum it might be a little more difficult), but some might not remember when they actually first came across Thrive.

I think that it would be kind of pointless asking people from 2010/2011 since the only active users from 2010 are scio and penumbra espinosa, and there are probably only 2/3 active users from 2011. Maybe people who joined during or after 2012?

Oliveriver wrote:

It might also be a good idea to add other sources - I came across Thrive from YouTube for example, and I know many others did as well.

At the moment sources like Youtube are in the "others" category since nobody told me that Youtube was the place he first learned about Thrive. Also, if someone reads about us in a comment under a Spore video I'd rather count him to the Spore community than just to Youtube. As soon as a source will "produce" a mentionable amount of users I will specify it individualy.

PS: Statistic has been updated!

Aquos4 wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

This is interesting, considering that the official spore forums have been offline for a few years now (although there is a strange Meta-Wiki about them which does mention Thrive and link to us). This is interesting work, Mirror. I'll update soon with some analytics about general site traffic.

I don't really like talking this way to a community mod/founder, but I'm afraid you are incorrect. I was on the Sporum just this morning and it was functioning perfectly. Maybe you just happened to be there at the wrong time.

I was under the impression it was completely offline. I suppose it still survives then.
Here's a bit of analytical data over the past week or so.

I have an Idea if I may... How about when people are creating an account they are also optionally asked were they heard about Thrive and any thing else you might want to know that's what some other sights do.