Coming Soon. Next Generation Stampauctionnetwork

From an email just received from Stamp Auction Network
Coming Soon... Next Generation.
We have spent this entire year developing a plan to reach the next generation of Stamp Collectors. In a single day this month we had over 500 inquiries from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Watch for how you can get involved as we explain our plan later this fall.

Are they competing with the Collectors Club?
There was a lot of previous discussion.
What do you think?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Younger people no longer use Facebook, so it is not surprising that they got inquiries from those platforms. Young people are even leaving Twitter, as of this year nearly 50% of all users are older than 49. So if they think they are targeting young folks, they are missing the target. But if they think that the 'next generation' are 30-50 year-old's, then they are looking in the right place.

Young people are on TikTok and Snapchat.
Don

Something about this tells me that this is just another website that sells stamps to the public . What they are doing is selling space to you to sell your material . They call it stand-holders , a-la just like a ebay store . . Can SAN members sell their stuff or do you need to become a stand-holder .

I guess they are also going to have a chatroom to discuss stuff .....that is where the Collector Club part comes in . Now they need to hook up with PAYPAL .

Another middle person trying to horn in on our collectors taking some of any well earned profits i(f any) over years of holding money in a non interest bearing sterile form. Just what we need - more hands in our pockets.

The old rules still apply. The value or price of an item is set by how much a willing buyer will pay a willing seller currently acting as the steward for the irreplaceable treasure being sold. Those proceeds should go to the collector NOT the middle merchant.

I don't understand any of this. Could you restate it more plainly, without hyperbole or folksy sayings? Who are you angry at, exactly?

as more and more of the collectors go from physical meetings to online collecting it's only natural that there's market opportunities appearing. This is the next generation of stamp collectors, no matter their age.

and there's nothing wrong with that?

I don't have any irreplaceable treasures, aside from my daughter, but, unless I find someone prepared to buy or swap stamps with me direct, I'm going to need someone to facilitate a sale or exchange. And I don't expect that person to do so for nothing.

Not surprising that SAN is out of touch with tech. Their stack is a horrific nightmare. It's a wonder of a thing they haven't been hacked to death, probably simply by being that far below the radar of anyone who cares.

Facebook's top strength is the friend graph. FB isn't retaining eyeballs over time (ack by Zuckerberg himself). People become bored in their social circle and grow tired of seeing Mom's post kid photos. The exact opposite is TikTok, which has successfully strived to just show you something you like with just a swipe. The friends graph barrier gone and kids don't care. Or Reddit where you interact with people you don't know on topics you want to.

Now if they chose FB for 50 year olds clueless about new tech, they went to the right place.

Clearly SAN isn't skating to where the puck will be.

Let's not get wrapped around the axle with FaceBook. I read the post as just an acknowledgement that their current social media engagement on FB, Insta, and Twitter has them excited and they've developed a plan to strengthen it in some way.

53 tweets on twitter, 20 followers. 4 accounts. Inquiries? Not so much as a comment on a posting there. Plus theybhave a bunch of dormant accounts.

They need help building community, because they are just nice people, without understanding on how to go about this.

So exactly what is "Next Gen SAN"?

They're upgrading to windows NT 4.0!!

Trying to look at any page of auctions on SAN is a pitb. Hit back and the cursor has to cross all those useless (for the most part) tabs at the top of the pages and drop down crap covers the screen every time. Feels like decades old web design.

Of course I could simply be a big dummy who doesn't know how to navigate a webpage but that is a bit unlikely.

I've been using SAN for quite a few years and have appreciated having the facility to bid on auctions, including quite a few held by many auction firms that I would otherwise have never know existed. But those dropdown menus are insane - I feel like I'm wrestling with a giant blob of molasses whenever I try to navigate around the site. No computer expert here, but I assume there are ways to streamline the functionality of that aspect of the website.

My emails from stamp auction network are usually signed " Droege Computing Services " suggesting expertise in computing. Is the stamp auction network an offshoot of a computer person who collects stamps and developed the site as a hobby,or an expert computer person developing the site trying to make money out of stamps?

Designing a good, modern website takes both good coders (functionality), graphic artists (make it pretty), and interface expertise (layout and page design). Very rarely is this one person and typically takes several people. The SANS interface is poor, definitely looks like 1999. It is barely 'mobile friendly' and this really needs to be addressed. Functionally, I'll let others speak to it but perhaps they focused on this first and will be slowly improve the interface moving forward.
Don