More than you’d think, even got attacks on the database, defacing, etc. And then you had frequent shitshows outside of RB itself with a slew of opinionated fools who “knew” better than the dum dums actually using the site.
Precisely what I’m saying. 
There is no way anyone is still working on this site. App hasn’t been updated in 7 months, the website even longer. Pure maintenance mode at this point. After all those years and so much passion from so many dedicated people, Ratebeer ended up as nothing but a tax writeoff for ABInBev.
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Hello folks,
Very interesting topic.
When I see friends, brewpubs, taprooms, or breweries using Untappd, I really don’t worry about its health.
But when I read here how is Ratebeer these days, I feel like this topic should have been named “Is Ratebeer Dying”… 
I’m absolutely not aware about what’s going on about RB, so it would be nice if someone could explain me its situation. 
I’ve got a wheelbarrow.
[which is to say, RateBeer is mostly dead]
Not just an event with Pabst, but an event for their effing Hard Coffee - and yeah, it’s being slagged off in the UT moderators forum…
As others have said, UT is very much a commercial enterprise, even more so now it’s owned by NextGlass. And it shows - stuff happens that is clearly driven by sales, not the users or moderators, and there’s a strong sense that they don’t want to do anything to majorly upset their paying business customers.
But users keep checking in, and it’s now a much more reliable source of new beer info than RB. I often have to add beers here that already have multiple check-ins, sometimes dozens of them, on UT.
NextGlass is being backed by a financial firm since last year, so best guess who the investors truly are. It also speaks for their need to keep churning the financials of the company in an upward direction. Max profits or lose investors!
As for activity, I would say they are still killing it over RB. However, I’ve noticed that I’ve had to add several beers to RB that haven’t been added to UT. This never happened pre-COVID TBH, usually always on UT and with no fewer than 50+ checkins.
Untapd is having a beer fest this weekend at PetCo Park in San Diego where the Padres play. Not a small venue to book.
A few months ago there was a flurry of activity with the country splits, but then Joe effectively killed any further effort on any more “radical changes.” So ya, that was the last thing that happened:
Then again, other than complaining, maybe better to figure out what we would want if we did get changes? I’ve been saying for a long time to allow collabs to be clickable. AKA the way that beers brewed on contract are. So right now the beer in a collab only shows up on the brewery that brews it in house’s page, but it would be great to have have a section of collabs on each brewery’s page, and that you could enter both as clickable when you add a new beer.
Also, THE ABILITY TO ADD TAGS WHEN YOU ADD NEW BEERS. Sorry, did I mention that before?
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Back in the time when we thought change was coming we made some very elaborate lists of proposed changes, but I don’t see a point in re-posting those. Funds needed to make state of the art site are peanuts for RB owner. However I don’t see why would they make even such small investment or how would it benefit their cause. Looking back I’m even a bit surprised the app was developed.
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Come on, it only took 10+ years of beating the drum to get Belgium and other countries split 
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It pains me to remember how much stress we had just to make the app devs take feedback from actual users of the site seriously.
If I understand you correctly. The problem with the functionality you suggest with collabs is that there are some beers that have the same identical named beer and the different breweries had slightly different recipes.
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Untappd is improving steadily. I don’t rate on it, but when I go out I always use it to check menus ect. Not to mention I have to add most every new beer I drink on Ratebeer, and steal the description from Unrappd quite a bit. They have a better relationship with brewers, whereas most rightfully see RB as selling out. RB missed the bus and is on life support. Its cool that we added states, but the stats pages suck anyway compared to how they once were, and are quite inconvenient to utilize. I still add lots of beers and wish the site well, but you have to wonder if one day it will just be gone.
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It’s funny though, see one as sellouts to the industry, but be on good terms with those who have become industry themselves in some ways and were cooperating with industry whenever it suited them. But yeah, can’t blame them for the former.
It’s not about being sellouts. It’s about the fact AB Inbev has no use of this site. We don’t know if its going to be here tomorrow or not. And lack of communication and transparency does not help.
On the other side industry themself has use of our ticks and rates, beer menus and whatnot. They are needed to keep the whole thing running.
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What transparency is provided by UT? Do we take for granted that because RB has a forum and there has been interaction over the years that developers or @joet requires to provide us with the long term business plan for the site. TBH @joet didn’t even need to tell us that he had sold off to a subsidiary company of ABinBev, but he did.
UT has already been bought by Next Glass Inc, who then bought BA, who then turned around to get significant financial investments from Providence Strategic Growth. For all we know this could be owned by Molson or Disney…can’t tell you for sure.
What I can say is those that didn’t spend 13.99 a year when RB was independent to improve this platform better not be spending $49.99 year on UT.
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I don’t need transparency if darn thing works. Pure logic tells me they need to keep things running to get rates, money from bars, data to sell.
But if enthusiast project gets sold to the company we’re trashing and which has no use of the data we’re providing then some transparency would be nice. Just to know if hours we put weekly to provide data into this place will be gone tomorrow. Thats the same data Joet sold. Not that I blame him, just saying it would be nice to know what happens.
Sure but you could have the one brewed in house with the normal beers, then the one brewed at other breweries in the collab section at bottom of page/end of list. Or on every brewery, there could be a link at the top that says “Check collaboration beers” then you could divide that into those “brewed out of house” and “brewed in house.” Should solve that.
I think that untappd app is actually quite bad, BUT the basic functionally works fine (aka search+check-in) and that’s why it is popular. Even untappd website is really fine, if you just want to do the check-ins and see what you have tried before, rb website in the other hand (especially if you are using it from mobile) and just want to do check-ins…
