What is MN really about.

[Neverendingenergy]

I see people posting for support or advice. Some threads will be sensitive. Or the op is in a bad place.

Rather than support most of the replies I see, seem to be trying to catch op out . Dismiss their feelings, impy what they're saying can't possibly be the truth. People don't seem to take op at face value.

It was a site for support. That was a long time ago.

MN mirrors the movement in society in general these days. MN is no different to other social media now. All the good stuff diluted away.

Not a gamechanger that the founders originally made.

A money making business.

How do they make money? I have never subscribed nor have I clicked on a shared ad. It is a vital question.

People sometimes seem to be more keen to troll hunt or play devil's advocate then they do to support others.
It's not a place I'd ever post for support tbh, but I still enjoy it generally.

MN has hundreds of thousands of users, including lovely people, horrible people, bots, trolls, people trying to get your personal details, men with pregnancy fetishes having a wank, bored schoolboys, your best friend, Daily Mail hacks, etc etc. I'm not sure it's "really about" anything. Take what you want from it but don't mistake it for a group of friends.

AIBU can be a bunfight.

But other boards can be very helpful and supportive e.g. Adoption, Education, Mental Health.

MN is a commercial business which seeks to generate profit for its shareholders. Specifically, media platform on which the users are the product and the advertisers are the customers.

How does it make money from you or I?

Because advertisers buy space to target MN users.

I have never bought anything advertised here. Nor I suspect do the vast majority of people.

Doesn't Mumsnet have something like 12 million unique users a year?

Of course there will be disagreements.

But if I want information, support or advice then Mumsnet has never let me down. On the whole a community of (mostly) women is brilliant.

In 2018, Mumsnet had 1.3 billion page views from 119 million unique users, and a revenue of £8.6 million.

That's from Google.

I understand profits went down after that, hence the birth of MN Premium.

It used to be a fab place for advice and chat with some straight talking. But it got a lot of coverage in the media then it attracted all sorts including all the angry types, trolls and fantasists.
Now it's anything goes really.

Have you ever clicked on a TV ad? Or a radio ad?

@BigFluffyHoodie Not sure what you mean by click on a TV ad. Or radio for that matter. I know what I want to buy and it never involves MN.

Do you think MN is run for the good of it's users? It's run as a business to make money.

By charging advertisers to promote their brands to us while we are using the site. In just the same way online newspapers do.

I’ve had great help and support on here.

its also one of the few places where woman recognize and call out shitty behaviour of men to other women. In RL women just tend to say ‘men what are they like!’ But on MN you’ll get women saying, ‘that’s not acceptable and you don’t need to put up with that’. That’s rare and valuable.

it’s one of the few places where women can meet to discuss openly and robustly on any topic with limited censorship.

MN is obviously a business, but it provides a valuable and unique service and platform to everyday women to chat, support, advise and organise. MN have really held the line against immense pressure and lobbying to allow women to robustly discuss issues that women feel are important to them. I admire and thank MN for that.

I mean, our likely future PM berates women for saying only women have a cervix, saying we should not say that, so in that context I think you can see the admirable standing-on-principle importance of MN, and how important MN is. There aren’t many who are prepared to stand up for women naming and speaking their truth about themselves, as KS illustrates. So thank God MN has more courage and principle than most.

There's lots of lovely supportive people here. But also a lot of people who seem to truly hate mothers and babies/children. For that reason I would t necessarily consider it a support site.

Annual turnover is £8m according to Companies House. Thank you @BarelyLiterate for explaining how that has been derived.

@Bloomingdaffs do you think MN would be better if it was less of a 'Vipers' Pit' and more of a mindfulness site to which users subscribe?

Genuine question. If it is a good and positive site, maybe there is value in subscribing.

If MN turns into a mindfulness site, I'm out the door as quickly as possible

About?
Same as Reddit, Facebook, any site really with mostly user generated content.

To the owners of the site it's a business and we're the product, being sold to advertisers.

To the users of the site it's a place to talk.

You do understand that the reason you know what to buy is almost certainly based on marketing? It's not always conscious, but almost all of your shopping choices will be formed by having seen an advert (online, on TV, heard on radio, billboard at a bustop, in a magazine, etc), told about it by a friend (who saw an advert), packaging, placement in store, etc. All of which is a form of advertising.

And I suspect they're not relying on your choices alone. Just because you don't respond to the adverts (or don't think that you do), doesn't mean that thousands of others don't as well. We are not all the same. Advertisers wouldn't keep paying to advertise if they weren't getting results!

Maybe it needs two doors then @mynameiscalypso ?

MNM - "Mindfulness" - subscribe and get genuine valuable support.

MNB - "Basic" - FOC but get the adverts and tabloid style toxic gossip. Feast on threads about Megan, Sunak and the 447th thread about husbands not carrying the mental load.

Needs two separate teams of moderators though.

But I get and have had years of genuine support on here. I have a very close group of (real life) friends who I met on here. I've had invaluable help and advice on a number of issues.