Tapatalk Forum App for xenForo - iOS / Android / Windows Phone Mobile App [Deleted]

[raytrails]

Would be great to share that email here, for other wanting to do the same

It's written in my native language, but earlier in this thread somebody posted their message to their users. It was pretty much the same reasons.

 

[empire]

Should they simply be charging admins (and/or users) more for the privilege of using a premium, fluid, native interface instead of pushing all these sneaky revenue raising tactics out with each update?

They should at least give an option of paying that doesn't involve any sneakiness. They should put forum owners first and remember that most of us in turn put our membership first. When they do things that benefit themselves at the expense of forum owners and forum members, they lose business.

 

[Ingenious]

However what is it that has brought tapatalk to this point?

I think they completely misjudged the fact that forums are competing for dwindling interest against Facebook and the likes, so forum admins DON'T want any kind of app where their work is diluted with other forums, their competitors, or where scant advertising revenue is lost to a third party. My perception is they have decided they think they know what's best for forums, rather than leaving this in the owners' hands, so have failed to recognise how each forum is unique.

My needs no longer align with what this app provides. I just want an app that lets MY community use MY forum and no-one else's, I would be willing to pay for this (not Tapatalk BYO!) as I am sure most other large forum owners would be.

This situation often happens when there is no healthy competition and someone has a monopoly.

I do feel however it is worth mentioning that in some cases, TT's decisions are forced by the app store rules and other considerations. I read they had been removing forums that had, according to Apple, "adult" content. Also Apple wouldn't now allow off-app registration (direct registration through the browser, which is critical for our spam control!). So I have some sympathy with them and I can certainly see why no-one else is giving this a try.

 

[MySiteGuy]

ForumRunner had a shot at being a serious competitor, then IB bought them. You know what happens next.....

 

[whynot]

Are they being greedy?
Or are they just trying to survive?
Do they have completely the wrong business model?

All three.

 

[tapatalk]

Guys - thank you for all the responses so far. The previous message from this account is a system generated message from this site that our admin has temporarily removed the resource listing from xenForo.com and created confusion. Our apology.

This is probably not the best timing but is part of our clean up effort to make sure we response to site owner complaints faster. Tapatalk has been listing the same resource in over 10 forum system official page and they creates a lot of challenges for us to make sure we update them, and response to them promptly. xenForo product page was the last one (except WordPress which is mandatory for site owner wish to install/update plugin right from the product page) that we removed.

To make sure we response to every issues, lately we have upgraded our ticket support system with Salesforce, along with a one click button in our website to submit issue tickets, although there are still a lot of balls get dropped when users submit issue to this site or other unofficial product listing page.

Now, a moment of reflection, it is indeed a challenge for us to keep both site owner and end-users happy. When we talk to users, their #1 concerns is still the app is very hard to use, a lot of them discovered Tapatalk but never use any forums seriously, and we want to change that by making it easier to use, and in the process we might be disrupting what we all been get so used to, and for site owner it means losing a little bit of control in terms of advertising placement, third-party MOD support etc.

I reckon that we have been focusing too much in end-users and not enough to site-owner in past year and we are trying to dial back a bit. The eCPM guarantee was a great start and we have been giving out as much as 120% of ads revenue to site owners (number of them are making 4 digits revenue / month from Tapatalk advertising), and we are the only forum app that supports native advertising. Also, we are the only partner with Google of their App Indexing program that works with multi-sites. We have now over 2000 sites approved the Tapatalk-Google app indexing invitation (check your WebMaster tool console if you haven't that boost your SEO ranking especially when user already installed Tapatalk.

We are also in processing of replacing the ancient XMLRPC protocal to JSON and has already rolled out to number of forum system, and our Windows Phone app now runs on JSON, the team is working on the vBulletin and xenForo XMLRPC->JSON migration which should cut at least half of the server resources it need to run Tapatalk.

We are also going to launch the DFP integration in Tapatalk soon so you will have 100% control of the ads inventory.

But there is always something that caught us off-guard. The "View on Tapatalk" button was added to email notifications to answer popular requests from end users with ability to open the thread in app from xenForo default email thread notification easily. So we went ahead to add the button (Tapatalk Blog – Latest News and Feature Spotlight – Driving Retention Through Enhanced Member Emails) but it appears to angry a lot of site owners. To be honest it doesn't really drive any new downloads for us but more for making it easier for your site members already on the app to response to thread easily. It reminds us features like this should be introduced more carefully and perhaps we should out-right removed it if it is something you don't like.

In any case, we want your feedback and we have been investing in making the integration better. And it takes a lot of resource and effort to do it right and I believe we are only half way there to make the forums appealing again to the generations who get used to Facebook, Twitter experience on mobile.

Just email us at support@tapatalk.com or even to me directly at winter@tapatalk.com we are listening. We have three person including myself watching the Saleforce tickets and support email and we look forward working with you.


Regards,
Winter Wong
Founder, Tapatalk

 

[whynot]

we are listening.

Why are you closing threads when there are some concerns about your script?

 

[Robru]

What are the alternatives for Tapatalk ?

 

[ŽivaAkcija]

there is no any, tapatalk is dead like forum runner

 

[RobinHood]

The "View on Tapatalk" button was added to email notifications to answer popular requests from end users with ability to open the thread in app from xenForo default email thread notification easily.

If I was still using Tapatalk I'd love this feature, not really sure what all the fuss was about in this particular case.

 

[Robru]

not really sure what all the fuss was about in this particular case

Me neither, until there is something else I just keep using Tapatalk. My users like to use it.

 

[MySiteGuy]

What are the alternatives for Tapatalk ?

On Android there is free Forum Fiend. It uses the Tapatalk API. Since it uses a different user agent string than regular Tapatalk clients, you can use .htaccess block all access to the mobiquo directory except to Forum Fiend.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ape.apps.forumfiend

 

[MySiteGuy]

If I was still using Tapatalk I'd love this feature, not really sure what all the fuss was about in this particular case.

The fuss is it's putting this button in ALL post reply notifications, Tapatalk user or not --- instead of only in notifications to Tapatalk users. Whether or not an admin wants to push their users towards Tapatalk in post notifications should be their decision, not Tapatalk's.

Oh, and Tapatalk coming here bragging about how much money they are making people, they are also ripping off in my opinion a great many smaller publishers (which is probably the majority). If they don't reach $5/month in earnings they lose all their earned Tapatalk for the month, it does NOT accumulate monthly, unlike every other ad network out there.

 

[raytrails]

Me neither, until there is something else I just keep using Tapatalk. My users like to use it.

You have obviously not been reading this thread.

 

[RobinHood]

The fuss is it's putting this button in ALL post reply notifications, Tapatalk user or not --- instead of only in notifications to Tapatalk users. Whether or not an admin wants to push their users towards Tapatalk in post notifications should be their decision, not Tapatalk's.

If an admin really doesn't want their users to use Tapatalk then they shouldn't have it enabled in the first place. As an admin you gave users the option to use this feature of your site and that button makes it more useful.

The problem here is some admins don't actually want more users using the app as they feel TT is stealing their potential revenue and they can't monetize tapatalk users to the same extent they can browser based visitors.

This model doesn't seem to be working for admins that rely on display ad monetization. It seems either the users or the admins have to start paying more for the native app experience. Until then you're going to have TT trying to skim off all your ad revenue in exchange for your users to get a better native mobile experience.

I guess the question is does the app experience and push notifications increase user registrations, interaction and retention vs the browser experience enough? Does it result in enough more page views to compensate for the loss in revenue shared with TT?

Do you give up some of your revenue to get more users and activity and a better user experience for you members? Or do you cut off the app completely and hope your users are happy with the (arguably) lesser responsive web based interface?

 

[Robru]

Do you give up some of your revenue to get more users and activity and a better user experience for you members?

I totally agree with you. I prefer that my members can choose from more options than I deserve a few $ on it.

 

[Dakis]

If an admin really doesn't want their users to use Tapatalk then they shouldn't have it enabled in the first place. As an admin you gave users the option to use this feature of your site and that button makes it more useful.

I don't necessarily agree that because an addon is enabled, we should accept all the changes being done to it. I had tapatalk installed for users that wanted to be on it and preferred it from the responsive layout. Not because I wanted to push more users to it, which is what that button does.

Do you give up some of your revenue to get more users and activity and a better user experience for you members? Or do you cut off the app completely and hope your users are happy with the (arguably) lesser responsive web based interface?

For me it wasn't a selection that had to do with revenue. In my forum I was getting less than 100 posts a month from members using tapatalk, so even if those users stop their activity completely in the forum (which they probably won't) the damage is not massive - on the other hand I'm not really going to gain any revenue from some of that activity if it does move through the responsive layout.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Well here's another one for y'all

Is TT works with Xf 1.5? | Tapatalk - Community Chat & Support

Me:

Has anyone verified that 2FA is not bypassed via Tapatalk?

rugk:

Just tried it and TT is bypassing the 2FA of XenForo.

Me:

Just so I'm clear, what exact steps did you take?

I'm not sure how 2FA works. So if you set it up, then log in using it on your desktop, I think it remembers that for 30 days. But is that on each device? So if you then go to your phone (browser) do you have to 2FA again?

If not, then maybe the server remembers your 2FA not your device. In this case, you wouldn't know for sure.

If however each device or app has to use 2FA, then yes, TT could be potentially bypassing it.

This is similar to the password issue I brought up. Which was where if you changed your PW on the forum via desktop, TT did not log you out, at least, not right away.

So before we lower the hatchet, let's know what we're testing...I still don't have time to do this, just time to reply to this thread

Jury is out on this one still.

 

[empire]

The problem here is some admins don't actually want more users using the app as they feel TT is stealing their potential revenue and they can't monetize tapatalk users to the same extent they can browser based visitors.

The advertising is annoying, but it wasn't a dealbreaker for us. There is no guarantee that TapaTalk users would switch to our mobile site instead. They may just leave altogether, and in that case, we may as well have kept using it.

Our concern was partly due to lack of support for add-ons that our site uses, and partly due to this part of their ToS, emphasis mine:

In consideration for Tapatalk granting you access to and use of the Service, you agree that Tapatalk and its third party providers and partners may (i) place such advertising and affiliate links on the Service, and (ii) access your email database solely in connection with Tapatalk's invite a friend feature which allows users to invite friends to join your forum, and trending email service which sends emails to forum users letting them know of top conversations in the forum.

This Agreement may be amended from time-to-time without notice in Tapatalk's sole discretion. Any changes to this Agreement will be effective immediately upon the posting of the revised Agreement on the Application, our website, or in an updated version of the Service.

It's not about taking away a choice to use tapatalk, it's about taking away members' right to decide who has their data. It's a violation of our own ToS. TapaTalk is presented as a choice for forum members, but in fact there is no choice about whether or not TapaTalk will collect their data, just as there was no choice about whether users would get the TapaTalk buttons in their emails.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Here's what I did:

Via PC, enabled 2FA and verified

Via iPhone / Safari, logged out and logged back in. It asked for 2FA and I verified this. I left the "remember for 30 days" unchecked

I then went to TT on same device and logged out and logged back in. No 2FA question. But that does not imply it is bypassing since I had verified the device and was logged in via browser.

So I logged out via browser then tried to log back in again to verify it had not remember the device, which it had not. I did not log in.

I then went to TT and logged out and logged back in successfully without a 2FA question.

Next, I changed my password via PC. I then logged out and logged back in, and got the 2FA prompt. Did the same on iPhone/browser, got 2FA prompt. Logged out of TT and logged back in successfully with new password and no 2FA prompt and was able to post.

Second test: I have an old iPhone with Tapatalk installed, using a test account. The app was out of date so I updated it.

Then I logged in via PC to that account and changed the password and then enabled 2FA and verified it. I then went to old iPhone browser and tried to log in, got 2FA prompt.

I went to updated TT app and was able to go straight to the forum and post without TT asking me to log in again (because I had changed my password!!). I then logged out of TT, and logged back in (using new password), no 2FA prompt. Was able to post.

TT is most definitely bypassing 2FA in Xenforo.