From the amount of people I see logged in, it's a great pity some of them are just prepared to lurk tather than contribute in some way, by giving feedback on something a member has posted on here.
It's the tap screen culture. It's harder to tap something out than type it. Just registering to join so they can post something takes a bit of careful tapping.
But many of them don't know that typing may be better or easier, even if you only type with 2 fingers. We're reverting to a time before the 1990s where many never or rarely touched a keyboard except in their school days. And they're becoming more computer illiterate than in the 1980s as they have an app do everything they want, with no idea what the app is really doing. And if there's not an app for it, they feel it simply can't be done.
There is no app for Betty's, but at least they get a separate feed of Betty's that I specially made just for mobile devices. But they won't get the full mobile version if they don't register & join.
I was surprised last month at rave reviews about an app that lets you hear "Coast to Coast" & "Midnight in the Desert" radio shows on their phone & tablet for only $1.99. LOL. The app is just a stripped down un-secure browser loaded with spyware & adware that sends them to an online radio page that anybody could access for free with any browser. But they don't know how to google search to find the page, type a web address into the adress bar, or bookmake/save a page. If there's not an app for that, they're lost & the site may not even exist to them.
Big web, media, advertising companies, & governments love this. It puts the independent & small websites out of the loop of the computer illiterate. They can control more of what they can see, & buy, or who they may vote for.
People are tapping away on Facebook, twitter, & texting in hopes of being more popular & noticed (there's an app for that). So by the time they get here, they're all tapped out, & have no motivation to tap much or join for their secret fantasies.
To a lot of people we're just a radio, TV, or YouTube channel. They don't think that they could or should interact here. They think we're more for entertainment than for discussion.
Look at all the readers at Stories clicking all over the place -- our busiest site. But most of the time it's only the same handful of people who ever respond to something there.