If we are looking from users’ point of view - we know we are living in the "me-too" environment, whereby many are competing to provide similar type of services. Users then have many choices, and to maintain an engagement on each social media platform requires effort and time - some people (often younger) do better than others. Having said that, there was a research somewhere whose findings are that many CEOs do not participate in social media. (of course the little portion that do are extremely active - like Sir Richard Branson for example).

If we look at other 'competitions' - I use LinkedIn as an example, as that's the only one I have just about a time to maintain - it has a huge number of subscriptions - a quick search shows >200m users. Compare this with 150k of IET membership numbers & assuming they are all subscribed to MyC.

Yes - these >200m users are not all 'target' market - when we segmenting it further, then we see LinkedIn groups, which then varies from hundreds memberships to ten or hundred thousand members.

Having followed different LinkedIn groups, I have seen a "trend" that sustainable groups (whereby you see continuous postings by different individuals, and users are engaging in replies, debate, etc) - are those who have circa 2000 users. Some of the "successful" ones also have a full/part time admin working on it.

IMHO therefore, we need to come back to what's the objectives of the MyC. I dont think making MyC as a 'me-too' platform was the motive behind it.

We as members come to IET as for a technical and professional guidance, technical content, industrial trends and thought leaderships. IET journals, IET.TV and resource pages, I suspect, are very popular.

So to conclude (& sorry it becomes a bit long now), IMHO;
- to simply increase traffic is a wrong motivation
- if we dont know what memberships want from a platform - we ought to ask (right approach from you starting this discussion)
- we can review what contents are the current favourites
- we can 'benchmark' from others
- IET resource pages are still on "traditional mode" - display there and leave there - this is Web 1.0 - we are now on Web 2.0, whereby 'user interaction' is the focus. MyC is an attempt to this - however without compelling content - people like you and me will not come back. Shifting resource pages to MyC would not be a good idea either - integrating and linking the two could be the silver bullet.

What do you think?

If we are looking from users’ point of view - we know we are living in the "me-too" environment, whereby many are competing to provide similar type of services. Users then have many choices, and to maintain an engagement on each social media platform requires effort and time - some people (often younger) do better than others. Having said that, there was a research somewhere whose findings are that many CEOs do not participate in social media. (of course the little portion that do are extremely active - like Sir Richard Branson for example).

If we look at other 'competitions' - I use LinkedIn as an example, as that's the only one I have just about a time to maintain - it has a huge number of subscriptions - a quick search shows >200m users. Compare this with 150k of IET membership numbers & assuming they are all subscribed to MyC.

Yes - these >200m users are not all 'target' market - when we segmenting it further, then we see LinkedIn groups, which then varies from hundreds memberships to ten or hundred thousand members.

Having followed different LinkedIn groups, I have seen a "trend" that sustainable groups (whereby you see continuous postings by different individuals, and users are engaging in replies, debate, etc) - are those who have circa 2000 users. Some of the "successful" ones also have a full/part time admin working on it.

IMHO therefore, we need to come back to what's the objectives of the MyC. I dont think making MyC as a 'me-too' platform was the motive behind it.

We as members come to IET as for a technical and professional guidance, technical content, industrial trends and thought leaderships. IET journals, IET.TV and resource pages, I suspect, are very popular.

So to conclude (& sorry it becomes a bit long now), IMHO;
- to simply increase traffic is a wrong motivation
- if we dont know what memberships want from a platform - we ought to ask (right approach from you starting this discussion)
- we can review what contents are the current favourites
- we can 'benchmark' from others
- IET resource pages are still on "traditional mode" - display there and leave there - this is Web 1.0 - we are now on Web 2.0, whereby 'user interaction' is the focus. MyC is an attempt to this - however without compelling content - people like you and me will not come back. Shifting resource pages to MyC would not be a good idea either - integrating and linking the two could be the silver bullet.

What do you think?