There is an online bulletin board system for Postechians named PosB. PosB serves as an open forum in which Postechians openly exchange views, form opinions, and debate on university events and social issues. Sometimes, it has its role as a popular meeting place for those who share the same hobby or a second-hand market. Like this, PosB has settled down as a part of POSTECH. However, it is slowly losing its reputation as time goes on. The Postech Times dug into why PosB is losing its reputation, and questioned its prospects with the sysop, Jong-hyuk Song(CSE, Ph.D. candidate).
PosB is declining in popularity. Even worse, some freshmen think that PosB is for seniors only. Two major reasons are largely responsible for this problem. First, a growing number of Postechians are using Social Networking Services such as Facebook and Twitter. On PosB the users can post writings on an appropriate bulletin board and others can leave comments on them. On SNS, on the other hand, the users are provided with more freedom and powerful options as to what they can post. Online users tend to select the service which offers higher-valued services to them. This decline would be unavoidable unless PosB continuously offers more enhanced services.
Second, the biggest merit of using PosB is now antiquated. The most attractive function of PosB used to be online chatting with friends by leaving comments. However, as smart phones have become widely used, students can communicate with one another frequently through messengers such as KaKao Talk, which is a global mobile instant messenger that can be used wherever and whenever. As a result, only a few portions of freshmen and sophomore get on PosB unfortunately. It degenerated into a space for a minority of seniors and arena for mudslinging between students with different political views which often lead to conflicts rather than discussions
The present PosB lost its function as board almost entirely for clubs and hobbies. When users visit PosB, they only use a few boards such as Announcment, ScratchPad, Postechian, FleaMarket, Jokes, and Issues out of necessity. According to sysop Song, PosB fell into a decline after SNS became widely used. The recession of PosB would continue unabated unless PosB sysops make it ready for innovative changes. If not, PosB will be buried into memories of Postechians. In addition, they have to offer services that are user-friendly and interesting. To achieve this, they need to find out what users want and differentiate this from other websites.
Postechians don’t have to accept the inevitable and go with the flow. Of course, it is an incontestable fact that PosB is less competitive than world-famous websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. However, PosB is the bulletin board system of Postechians, by Postechians, and for Postechians. In the past, PosB used to take an important role to make up precious cultures of POSTECH. Postechians will need to re-evaluate what they have. If PosB finds a way for prosperity once again, PosB will be a meeting place for Postechians from fresh- men to graduates again. The choice is all up to Postechians.