Official Forum Closes, Let's Go Back To The Future

The official messageboard at julianahatfield.com is no more. The site admin, Stacee, has confirmed to me that there are no plans for it to return, advising that "Juliana was ready to pull the plug."

Its demise will come as no surprise to members, given that the forum has been 'hidden' for the last year, closed to potential new members and with an admin who candidly admitted her heart wasn't in it any more.

I'd like to thank Stacee for running it while she did, including its previous incarnation as the Some Girls board. Its closure together with its forewarned but still abrupt nature is however a big disappointment. It will be missed.

Although never a high traffic forum, it was the most active community for Juliana's fans. It was the natural home for fan discussion, for the diehards and particularly for newer and 'casual' fans where it would be the first and probably only place they would look for it. Juliana is now a rarity amongst artists in not having a forum on her website.

This is the main reason I've never put a forum on liveontomorrow.co.uk and why at least in the immediate future, I don't have any plans to do so now. I don't think the official one can be replaced.

I hope I'm wrong. As many of us no doubt know, there is nevertheless a messageboard / mailing list hosted on Yahoo called This is the Sound. This board pre-dates the official forum and has its origins in Juliana fan sites that came and went before this one. It was THE place to go for info and discussion and although quieter in recent years has never gone away.

A Yahoo Group may seem a bit ancient in the age of TwitFace social media but this should be preserved. It is after all Juliana fan heritage!

Hopefully enough fans will migrate there now. Although I didn't contribute much on the official one I'll endeavour to contribute now at This Is The Sound, and I'd encourage everyone else to. I'll be putting a more prominent link to it on this site. Hopefully it can take off again and allay my pessimism that the community will wither away over time; inevitable if Juliana's output becomes more sporadic and low profile.

If you have any other thoughts on how best to keep the Juliana fan community active, please leave them in the comments here or indeed at This is the Sound.

Update

on 2011-06-30 11:03 by Craig

A year on and this post still gets Google hits.

Hello there!

Inevitably This Is The Sound hasn't really generated the same levels of discussion as the old board. I still wish, forlornly, that it will come back.

Update

on 2010-06-30 20:33 by Craig

There's been a noticeable spike in traffic to this site over the last week via Google search referrals for 'juliana hatfield message board', rather underlining my opinion that the board was highly valued by a lot of us.  A real shame it's gone.