We’ll also consider the incentivised idea though that may be tougher to implement.
We are looking to expand this series as we speak. Stay tuned.
That’s a fair point.
We’ve been extremely busy over the last few months on a number of things, like adding hundreds of new stocks, preparing the launch of our new Invest Hub, and also a lot of holidays across the team — these are now over and we are back!
However, we want to do more to continue to make this forum the heart of Freetrade’s community, and we’re reading and taking on board all of our suggestions on this post. Thanks again for sharing them all.
We have some very cool stuff coming up — including MWRR which our beta testers have had their hands on for a few days now — and we’ll be sure you see those new items here, first.
I would be worried if the team is engaging with the forum often when there is so much needs to be done to improve the app. So I don’t mind the current trade off…
Agree with this if big members of the team were constantly posting in the forum people might wonder why they are spending so much time on the forum instead of working on the app. It is always nice to see the team on the forums but their reduced activity makes sense with all the new stuff coming out and being worked on.
I enjoy the discussions had on this notice board, but going forward i (personally) am not sure it is the correct medium for a Company that is growing and one day hopes to be very large.
Instead I would expect to see more focus given to mainstream social media sites where discussions can seep into other peoples feeds. At the moment people have to come to this site to see discussions but if this were happening more and more on Twitter (example) then all it takes is one retweet etc. and you potentially open up to others who may not have heard about Freetrade.
I don’t think we are in a privileged position anymore as early adopters to always be the ‘first to know’ - Freetrade is too big now, how many users? 250,000+ (i haven’t kept up) , that many people aren’t coming here for their info and to read the discussions I don’t think.
Yeah fair points - as I said earlier, I don’t have an issue with it but I think it has to be recognised that the community forum will lose engagement because it’s no longer the place to go.
It would be great if Freetrade could encourage more Deep Dives, some of the old ones are excellent!
A possible idea I’ve just thought of is on the FT app in the description section maybe include a direct link to the thread of that stock on the forum if one is already up and running. While if the stock does not have a forum thread already existing encourage users to create a new one for discussing the stock they’re interested in. I feel this could possibly increase the reach of this forum to more of the FT user base, giving them a place to discuss stocks they’re interested in. The majority of the people on the app likely aren’t too aware of the forum but if they were directly linked to it when looking at stocks they’re interested in it could spike engagement.
It could also lead to maybe in the far future having forum stock discussion threads linked and integrated to be accessed and posted on within the app so users don’t have to actually leave the app. Though this is likely a long shot and not sure how this fits with FT’s vision for the future app.
The majority of my friends are using Trading212. I know this app is relatively new but the quality of charts over there blow Freetrade out of the water. None of them would switch, except to claim the free share.
Growing our social channels has definitely been a big focus for us this year.
One of the key parts of our growth strategy is growing our audience and amplifying word of mouth, and we can indeed reach huge numbers of people on social.
At the same time, the discussions happening here on the forum are truly unique and can’t really happen elsewhere — it really is the heart of Freetrade, and the team read each and every post, even if we’re not always interacting.
Our beta tester group has also been hugely important over the last year or so and we still have a waiting list of hundreds to join that. We’ll look to revamp that in future so more people can take part in testing new features.
So from our point of view, it’s about striking a balance of our efforts between using social and other channels to grow awareness of Freetrade and spending time making the community an amazing place to learn more about and discuss investing.
Which, of course, is really driven by you all anyway
Cool idea! We are looking to get much more content in the app, for sure, and that would be a nice way of people being able to get straight into stock discussions.
While I agree with you in principle I haven’t seen any proper replacement for forum functionality aside from maybe reddit which some people consider to be dodgy.
Great point. It is also extremely hard with the current system to see and track requests that have already been filled and that are still pending leading to constant new posts about stocks already requested (ARK ETF, Airlines requiring nationality declaration etc)
