The Past
Ok For me. I hold Joe no ill will. Ratebeer has brought me so much joy, and so many friends.
The Present
But since the investment, its been steady down hill, and the Loss of Erics app to be replaced with a pretty but ultimately useless to my needs app has been such a disappointment.
The Future
I dont see anything on the horizon but the not so heat death or Ratebeer.
So whats the consensus
the Past im going to assume that as your here the past has been good to you
The Present
Ratebeers vastly improved recently
Ratebeers gotten better recently
Ratebeers ok for me just now
Ratebeer has got worse for me recently
Ratebeers gone to the Dogs
0voters
The Future
Ratebeer couldnt get much better
I think RateBeers going too go from Strengths to Strength
I think Ratebeer was declining (or should I say not progressing?) for years. Too many workarounds, too many users have left, not enough of fresh blood, beer market and competition have developed in ways nobody could imagine. Don’t know the numbers, but doubt it was financially sustainable. Many old users were satisfied with status quo, as long as they could rate like they used to and use the places section and the forums.
IMHO Joe sold RB while he still had something to sell. That’s my 2 cents despite the corporate gibberish we are reading in his announcements.
I wish it wasn’t the dark empire who bought the RB. I ask myself couldn’t large craft breweries who fought the empire in the beginning support RB (like BA and DFH seem to be supporting BAdv).
Do I hold anything against Joe? Not really. I’ve learned not to judge others before I put myself in their shoes. I imagine he did not have enough funds/patience/time to support this operation, which is all understandable. Wish whole thing was done a bit more transparent, but I guess this is how these things are done.
It’s highly unlikely things are going to get better. Too much uncertainty. Shame because this place wasn’t just a site where you kept your ratings. It was a place that gave you a feeling that anywhere you traveled you could find a person to have beer with.
Yeah i think Social media killed RB, as Rb was the social media of beer geeks before there was a name for it. But then it came along and we could have all our friends in one or two places not just our beer friends.
And yeah if joe ever planed to get out, now was prob his last chance…
I could have lived happily with RB plodding along meeting my needs as i thin it was a hard fight to grow. Id have loved to see it grow, but i dont see anything to help that, and see lots to put off long term users. If you cant keep your best ambassadors what hope have you. I
The biggest thing that has made RB get worse is the loss of users and the lack of new blood. I can use the site just fine even though it is buggy and unpredictable, but the fact I have to add beers constantly and sometimes am the only rater of a given beer hurts my user experience. I have been using this site since I was in college, and while the beer scene changed with one offs and all the new breweries (and I have money to afford beer), it used to be that birtually every beer I would see was on RB, often with over ten ratings. Woweee. In any case, the recent total sale is just going to continue the bleeding. No independent craft beer fans will join and raters will leave the site and some will actively delete ratings. Granted I have not done too much community ratebeer stuff before, I can happily say I met a few of you and traded with others. In addition, I was happy to become an admin and improve the database in my faire city. I do not know what I will do now, but, like many others, I will he examing backup plans/exit strategies. I have almost 9000 ratings, which have taken me lot of time. I value them for some irrational reason and would be sad to see them go.
