important The Next Evolution Of BreatheHeavy: A Letter From Jordan Miller

[redacted statement]

on the topic of making this forum less Britney specific (but keeping the Britney section without having to delete all these historic and iconic threads):

you could make a waiting list (or just a generic twitter poll) similar to the one you have now regarding "what other pop stars should get their own sections", meaning, if enough people would actively pick a specific artist, then that artist should get a designated section for them and them only.. I'm not sure how cluttered the forum would become by doing so but I think that's mostly dependent on the design and layout of the forum / general hub area that would lead to every other section, not the concept of having seperate sections itself.. though, since this is mostly a Britney forum after all, I feel like the artist specific sections may flop and be dead af.. it's definitely going to take a lot of time to build a community of users that's big enough to allow having actually active artist specific sections but it's still worth looking into.. who knows..  at least that way, you could keep the Britney section alive and well without the forum being tailored to her specifically.. 

[PokemonSpears]

14 minutes ago, breatheheavy said:

Love love love all of this. 

For all members: if you had your dream way of Exhale and its subsections was laid out - how would you want it? 

Agree with @cheri about asking the wrong people here lol but, there must be some members which also stan for other artists, so let's see what they have to say.

 

Trying to make my idea a little bit clearer, the Home page banner would have to be something totally neutral. Exhale's basic theme.

I personally like the current style, but I guess it would be revamped if you're trying to make it feel evolved.

I would put as I said, 8 - 10 sections in the same fashion as Britney's, with a big image of each artist, plus two extra sections for "More Music" and "General".

I'll sound like a grandpa because I don't follow any of the current acts, but let's say we start with Britney (  ), Beyoncé, Shakira, Xtina, Pink, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry  , Taylor and Ariana?? I don't know, I'm not even sure about how much content Pink could get, but yeah, you would have to decide how many and which artists to feature first. I guess there would be a setion for Cardi B, Nick Jonas, Justin Bieber or Drake or Miley, I don't know.

Once you enter each section, then each subforum would have their own banner featuring their artist, as the one we have with Britney now, but all of them keeping the Exhale's theme.

Now, the "More Music" section would send you to another "second Home" page with more sections displayed as the first one, but with smaller images so there's more to choose from. THAT would be my choice, but I know it would be a lot of work and probably each section would have like 2 threads initially, but I'm obsessed with organization and classifying things and if you're gonna think big, you have to think about the future and start with a good infrastructure as to how you're gonna handle the subforums when you get hundreds of threads for each artist :P 

The other easier, less appealing option would be just going straight to the threads, forcing each creator to pick a tag for the artist the thread is about. That way you would see in 6 months, or so, which artist is getting more threads than others and deserves their own subforum, with the section featured in the front. 

But if you choose the "smaller sections" option, below them there would be the threads that aren't focused in just one artist or band in particular but more "general topics" like "2000's music appreciation thread", polls or so on.  And also, the threads that ARE about an artist but that isn't that popular yet (those would have to be tagged if the fans aspire to get their own section).

 

Now, the General Section would have to get a similar treatment. I rarely visit the General Section, but I think right now is tooo general. There should be at least 4 major sections or so, we have funny/random threads, and then there's threads where people are talking about their personal struggles/depression and whatnot, but there's also others that are maybe a bit more in the kinky side, or topics about television, or more about LGBT themes or I don't know. Again, you would have to decide, but there should start getting subsections too, and with the same style of having an image that represents that section. I know it's not your purpose to become the next Reddit or so, but traffic is traffic I guess, so that section has to get some love and attention too.

 

We would need as members then, to have an option like a side menu, or in the same menu we have right now, to pin our favorite or most visited subforums so we don't get lost or we don't have to click so many times to get to the Rita Ora section lol

 

I don't know how forums work or how hard it would be to give maintenance to an structure like that, but I repeat, if you wanna go big, you'll have to be very ambitious so whenever a random person stumbles upon this site they really get the feeling that this is the best place, the most professional and welcoming forum they could join. That their fave has a nice place in here as respected and loved and cool as Britney's, even if we all know in our hearts that Britney was the one that started this all. 

Maybe all of us that are here now, already know this place as Britney's biggest fansite, and people from other forums too. But, there's always new people coming. I keep finding new people in the forum, some because they never cared to join, and others because literally became fans a couple of years ago (for whatever reason lol). So just as there are new Britney fans, there must be even more new fans of current artists, that are just discovering the magic of online forums and aren't biased yet about Exhale. 

[redacted statement]

8 minutes ago, PokemonSpears said:

so we don't get lost or we don't have to click so many times to get to the Rita Ora section lol

dieded.. 

[falka]

17 minutes ago, PokemonSpears said:

I would put as I said, 8 - 10 sections in the same fashion as Britney's, with a big image of each artist, plus two extra sections for "More Music" and "General"

I would put few threads dedicated to particular Youtubers like Trisha, Shane etc. but it could get wild, cuz THEY wouldn't be able to block or delete controversial stuff.
Lately when certain chanel dare to block me I was fuming and wanted to rant a bit publicly, but it's too small thang to meke another flop thread of mine  

Psychology in Seattle sucks btw

[PokemonSpears]

2 minutes ago, Lilith said:

That would require Jordan to also fix all the issues the site have, the bugs, glitches, the problems with the imgur links, the search function not working, the glitchy lukazuki theme, and of course change the looks of exhale so it won't be looking anymore like a Britney forum under the name "pop news site" .

I NEED so much the Imgur links to work, I'm even having trouble with giphy lately. 

Yeah, and as Jordan has implied, big changes would require money that he probably doesn't have right now, and if he found the way to invest on it, he doesn't even know if it's gonna work. If it doesn't work, he can always scrap it à la Larry Rudolph but he will never see that investment back. It's about taking the risk  

I kinda get the need of implementing paid memberships, but if he doesn't start by offering a different experience beyond the "exclusive content" to begin with, how is he gonna convince people to stay, or even try to browse on the forum?

I mean, I'll be happy if this stays as Britney exclusive, or being the main artist, but from a business perspective I have to admit the traffic/money will come from other fanbases, even if Britney stories do well. Lately we at least had the constant Vegas threads, but right now Britney doesn't even have a new album out, or show, or anything. And I can't believe I'm sounding like Jordan in 2014 when he explained his reasons for transitioning into a pop forum while most of us yelled at him  but it does apply for the current situation.
 

 

 

[PokemonSpears]

2 hours ago, cheri said:

exactly, it has to be conveniently made because we live in a lazy generation, so fast access is also very important....most people don't want to click through a jungle just to get to the section they want. everything needs a complete overhaul for it to happen anyways. it's been like 5 years and the fact still remains that NO other fanbases are interested in joining, and that's due to the blatant britney favoritism (her having her own section vs. no other artist having their own etc) it's a turn off. would i go to a forum that largely discusses beyonce just so i can talk about britney? no because no one will give a **** and i'd be left with a room of echoes.

this place is really nothing but a britney forum under the guise of a pop forum. how can it be a true pop forum when the owner just confessed to me that he doesn't want to part ways with the britney section lmao.

Totally, that's actually why I ended up here and not in a Beyoncé or Gaga forum. I guess I could've gone to ATRL or Popcrush or whatever is called, but again, I don't care about other artists and I hate these big *** threads with thousand pages for just "all Britney" or "all Mariah" or something. 

But I think he needs to focus in the newer generations, he won't bring fans from Gaga daily, but he COULD make them, and new fans, feel that they have a place here for their artist just as we keep getting new Britney members.

I know, because I already complained back in 2014, that losing the title of the biggest Britney Spears fansite must hurt, but at least back then, he rejected the idea of having two forums: keep Exhale for Britney and just come up with a completely new one. And it does make sense, it would be too much for one person, but then he needs to fully commit in the new direction of the site.

At some point Universe / Absolute Britney or whatever is called seemed like it was gonna become the biggest Britney fansite, but it eventually died, and became more desert than the 2013 performance. So if it couldn't do it, I don't think any other Britney dedicated site could become as big as Exhale was/is, so Jordan shouldn't worry about that. 

 

[Jordan Miller]

3 hours ago, cheri said:

you're asking a bunch of army members (and a majority of them admit they don't care about any other artist but britney, including the one u just quoted, obviously he's not biased...but that wouldn't truly be his dream exhale either)

their dream exchale is u converting it to a britney site again lmao...you're asking the wrong people, you'll get a couple of unbiased replies but let's be real here

Soo... should I not ask members then? lol 

[Jordan Miller]

3 hours ago, Lilith said:

It's the basic packet which allows ppl to read all the news articles onsite. The access to the other subsections is useless, it isn't anything important. It's just newsletters, a cooking recipes archive (LMAO), a game puzzle and stuff like that. Most people won't even care about those, they just want to read the news.
Still even after 1 year, they will be most likely releasing another cheaper package offer plus also that they offer every few months special deals with even lower price.

That's not really the point here tho, because eventho NYTimes has different packages and some really cheap ones right now, it's still a major news outlet with worldwide news and huge variety of content about literally everything in existence. It's not just some "pop" news.

I would strongly advice you to keep your mind open to several different subscription options for ppl to choose from. If you force only 1 package in the $5 price, I don't think it will draw ppl's interest that much if not at all. Because a lot of people on here are not even interested about that new "special" content, they only want to get rid of the ads. So it would be best to give them that option separately too.
 

It's not just some "pop" news.

Didn't love that part lol. I'll definitely keep your input in mind tho!

[indyRS]

I'll be leaving if there's a membership.

This forum was good for music leaks and stems, but I talk and discuss Britney over in Pop Justice. Much more mature place.

But I wish all the luck for the future. This is a great site.

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, Lilith said:

Jordan obviously you won't be always hearing things you are gonna like. You will hear also things you won't like. What is more important to you? To get comments always praising and go "yass jordan!" for anything you suggest? Or comments to point out where you did something right and where you did something wrong? Improvement comes with acceptance of criticism. Yes it's just some "pop" news right now on your site with majority of them being Britney news. Let's not compare NYTimes with your website. That will be a reach beyond the stars.

You aren't wrong. But BH (at least to me) is more than just some pop site. Issss my baby 

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, indyRS said:

I'll be leaving if there's a membership.

This forum was good for music leaks and stems, but I talk and discuss Britney over in Pop Justice. Much more mature place.

But I wish all the luck for the future. This is a great site.

No need to go anywhere! None of the changes will alienate anyone. It's only going to elevate the site  

[Jordan Miller]

5 hours ago, PokemonSpears said:

What they say about the banners is true. I mean, I don't care about other artists not having a place, because I don't care about other artists, but if this is supposed to be a pop forum, I think there should be a banner as big as Britney's for all the major acts BH wants to attract. Well, not the acts, but the fanbases. 

They need to feel as welcomed as Britney fans. 

I don't know how messy it would be for the site's design, but it could be tried with let's say, 8-10 major acts in the front page, and then have like a "More forums" section, and have a second page with a banner for other minor acts. As the demand increases, other subforums stuck in the general Music Section, or General Section, could get their front banner, or lose it.

Well, I'm calling them banners, but it's not the banner, it's those pictures we have on Exhale's home with Britney / Christina / Paris Hilton. 

Britney forum should then have to be treated equally, and in the remote case another subforum became more popular, we would have to accept it and put that other forum banner on top of Britney's. Having a little healthy competition could be fun  

At the beginning I don't know how Jordan could convince other fanbases to join, but initially the existing members could help, if they want to, by creating threads about their faves other than Britney, as they do now, but now within their respective section.

Great comment. I think I like the idea of main threads versus a bunch of subsections. What do you guys think? The new forums will be dead until we can incentivize new people to join who aren't just Britney fans. The Mariah and Xtina threads do pretty well. 

I'll have a think about the banners suggestion! 

[Jordan Miller]

5 hours ago, PokemonSpears said:

I think design is very important, maybe because I'm a more visual person, but I think that could be a good incentive. Just as we get these cool Britney themes on Exhale, there should be cool themes for other artists so their fans want to stay.

One of the reasons I don't spend much time on Pokémon / videogames forums is beacuse they're not that visually attractive to me. 

We can make multiple themes and the member can choose the design based on their favorite artist perhaps 

[Jordan Miller]

5 hours ago, cheri said:

the forum used to have a banner with a lot of popstars on it years ago but then jordan got lazy and only put effort into making a britney one whereas the other sections just have a blank banner with "exhale" written on it. not sure how other fanbases are supposed to feel welcome and comfortable on a forum where britney is clearly favored by getting her own section. it's ridiculous lmao. a britney fan wouldnt join a forum to talk about britney if it had 1 beyonce section.

I changed it all to Britney cause I got discouraged 

[Jordan Miller]

4 hours ago, I Always Sing Live said:

on the topic of making this forum less Britney specific (but keeping the Britney section without having to delete all these historic and iconic threads):

you could make a waiting list (or just a generic twitter poll) similar to the one you have now regarding "what other pop stars should get their own sections", meaning, if enough people would actively pick a specific artist, then that artist should get a designated section for them and them only.. I'm not sure how cluttered the forum would become by doing so but I think that's mostly dependent on the design and layout of the forum / general hub area that would lead to every other section, not the concept of having seperate sections itself.. though, since this is mostly a Britney forum after all, I feel like the artist specific sections may flop and be dead af.. it's definitely going to take a lot of time to build a community of users that's big enough to allow having actually active artist specific sections but it's still worth looking into.. who knows..  at least that way, you could keep the Britney section alive and well without the forum being tailored to her specifically.. 

I love the idea of asking people on social media what their thoughts are, but I expect a lot of the comments to be either britney or 'FLOP'

Altho I must say I am pleasantly surprised to the overall reaction to the memberships. I'd say 75% of the reaction was positive. I think most people are rooting for BH now and are along for the ride because it's been a 15-year journey 

[Brat]

I like change 

[Jordan Miller]

5 hours ago, Lilith said:

It's the basic packet which allows ppl to read all the news articles onsite. The access to the other subsections is useless, it isn't anything important. It's just newsletters, a cooking recipes archive (LMAO), a game puzzle and stuff like that. Most people won't even care about those, they just want to read the news.
Still even after 1 year, they will be most likely releasing another cheaper package offer plus also that they offer every few months special deals with even lower price.

That's not really the point here tho, because eventho NYTimes has different packages and some really cheap ones right now, it's still a major news outlet with worldwide news and huge variety of content about literally everything in existence. It's not just some "pop" articles.

I would strongly advice you to keep your mind open to several different subscription options for ppl to choose from. If you force only 1 package in the $5 price, I don't think it will draw ppl's interest that much if not at all. Because a lot of people on here are not even interested about that new "special" content, they only want to get rid of the ads. So it would be best to give them that option separately too.
 

Yea I don't disagree, but also giving too many options can be disastrous. Paralysis by analysis. If there's options, people tend to say 'ahh screw it' and nothing happens. Versus something super clear: either you subscribe to this or you don't. Not against other alternatives! Just explaining my reasoning as of right now =]

[Jordan Miller]

4 hours ago, PokemonSpears said:

Agree with @cheri about asking the wrong people here lol but, there must be some members which also stan for other artists, so let's see what they have to say.

 

Trying to make my idea a little bit clearer, the Home page banner would have to be something totally neutral. Exhale's basic theme.

I personally like the current style, but I guess it would be revamped if you're trying to make it feel evolved.

I would put as I said, 8 - 10 sections in the same fashion as Britney's, with a big image of each artist, plus two extra sections for "More Music" and "General".

I'll sound like a grandpa because I don't follow any of the current acts, but let's say we start with Britney (  ), Beyoncé, Shakira, Xtina, Pink, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry  , Taylor and Ariana?? I don't know, I'm not even sure about how much content Pink could get, but yeah, you would have to decide how many and which artists to feature first. I guess there would be a setion for Cardi B, Nick Jonas, Justin Bieber or Drake or Miley, I don't know.

Once you enter each section, then each subforum would have their own banner featuring their artist, as the one we have with Britney now, but all of them keeping the Exhale's theme.

Now, the "More Music" section would send you to another "second Home" page with more sections displayed as the first one, but with smaller images so there's more to choose from. THAT would be my choice, but I know it would be a lot of work and probably each section would have like 2 threads initially, but I'm obsessed with organization and classifying things and if you're gonna think big, you have to think about the future and start with a good infrastructure as to how you're gonna handle the subforums when you get hundreds of threads for each artist :P 

The other easier, less appealing option would be just going straight to the threads, forcing each creator to pick a tag for the artist the thread is about. That way you would see in 6 months, or so, which artist is getting more threads than others and deserves their own subforum, with the section featured in the front. 

But if you choose the "smaller sections" option, below them there would be the threads that aren't focused in just one artist or band in particular but more "general topics" like "2000's music appreciation thread", polls or so on.  And also, the threads that ARE about an artist but that isn't that popular yet (those would have to be tagged if the fans aspire to get their own section).

 

Now, the General Section would have to get a similar treatment. I rarely visit the General Section, but I think right now is tooo general. There should be at least 4 major sections or so, we have funny/random threads, and then there's threads where people are talking about their personal struggles/depression and whatnot, but there's also others that are maybe a bit more in the kinky side, or topics about television, or more about LGBT themes or I don't know. Again, you would have to decide, but there should start getting subsections too, and with the same style of having an image that represents that section. I know it's not your purpose to become the next Reddit or so, but traffic is traffic I guess, so that section has to get some love and attention too.

 

We would need as members then, to have an option like a side menu, or in the same menu we have right now, to pin our favorite or most visited subforums so we don't get lost or we don't have to click so many times to get to the Rita Ora section lol

 

I don't know how forums work or how hard it would be to give maintenance to an structure like that, but I repeat, if you wanna go big, you'll have to be very ambitious so whenever a random person stumbles upon this site they really get the feeling that this is the best place, the most professional and welcoming forum they could join. That their fave has a nice place in here as respected and loved and cool as Britney's, even if we all know in our hearts that Britney was the one that started this all. 

Maybe all of us that are here now, already know this place as Britney's biggest fansite, and people from other forums too. But, there's always new people coming. I keep finding new people in the forum, some because they never cared to join, and others because literally became fans a couple of years ago (for whatever reason lol). So just as there are new Britney fans, there must be even more new fans of current artists, that are just discovering the magic of online forums and aren't biased yet about Exhale. 

The other easier, less appealing option would be just going straight to the threads, forcing each creator to pick a tag for the artist the thread is about. That way you would see in 6 months, or so, which artist is getting more threads than others and deserves their own subforum, with the section featured in the front. 

 

This is genius 

[Jordan Miller]

1 minute ago, Lilith said:

You got discouraged but kept posting other artists mainpages in the Britney section and writing articles for other artists in general. That didn't exactly work.

 

Like 2 or even 3 options is not disastrous. Even with just 2 options is actually great. You could give people the choice to have only ads free, or ads free AND the content you talk about. If you force only 1 final option it will be guaranteed disastrous. Give them some more freedom and choice to be able to choose between at least 2 options. People are not stupid. They will be just fine with looking into 1-2 options. They won't be fine with only 1 and that's a fact because a lot of people are not interested in the content. How do you expect them to agree? Some people will want only ads free, and some might want both.

Hmmm

I could potentially do

Option 1: Ad free but no premium content

Option 2: Ad free and premium content

Option 3 (if possible): Ad free, premium content, ad free Exhale

 

I am going to have to disagree with you on the content part. About 10 minutes ago I posted on IG, Twitter and FB if people joined the waiting list they'll get a free Britney RX story in their inbox this week, and in 10 minutes I got 10 more people to join. 

https://bit.ly/BHRXwaitinglist

[Jordan Miller]

3 minutes ago, Lilith said:

The options 1 and 2 are great. What do you mean by the 3d option btw? ad free, ad free exhale = the same thing no?


Just becaue people signed in the waiting list doesn't mean all of them will actually pay when the time comes. And how do you even disagree lmao, did you not look at the posts in this thread alone? A lot of people expressed that they are not interested in the content. Im not saying that there wont be ppl interested, sure there will be some, but there will be also ppl that won't be interested. That's why I insist that you must include 2 options to satisfy BOTH groups.

Option 1 and 2 didn't include Exhale.

Perhaps

Option 1: Ad free main page, stories $3

Option 1A: Ad free Exhale $3

Option 2: Ad free main page, stories, Exhale + premium content $5

Also yes I know not everyone is interested in the premium content, but I'm not looking to capture 100% of BH's existing audience. 1% would be great though. 7% is the ultimate goal ;]