TBT Facts: Age

[Alolan_Apples]

Time for another series of weird fact entries. This one is on the features of Bell Tree Forums. I would go over interesting facts related to the features each day. I would also cover general information.

Today’s entry is on...

Age​

As you see, Bell Tree Forums was founded in 2004. I may not be a member within the first ten years, but I learned a lot about it when browsing the older threads. It was once on Zetaboards, but it transferred to vBulletin in 2011. It may not be the oldest Animal Crossing site, but it’s pretty old for a fansite. If I had to designate eras, there would be five different eras.

• Pioneer Era - the forum back when it was founded. This was the earliest days of TBT, before Wild World came out.
• Wild World Era - the forum during 2006 to 2008, when Animal Crossing: Wild World was the top AC game.
• City Folk Era - the forum during 2009 and 2010, back when Animal Crossing: City Folk was the top game. This was the last era on Zetaboards.
• Early vBulletin Era - this was when TBT 2.0 was born. Many modern features we know started in this era. This could also be the “silent” era, when Bell Tree was very inactive.
• First Modern Era - since June 2013, TBT has gotten much more active. After the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the site has gotten more popular. The majority of the members on this forum, including me, joined during this time.

Without further ado, here are some facts about the site and how old it is:

• This site is older than Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Bing, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, and Wikia. It even opened to the public before Facebook expanded beyond Harvard.
• Some of the members on this site are no older than the site. And some of the members on this site are older than the internet as a whole.
• A few months prior to my membership, every staff member were members before ACNL’s worldwide release. Now, half of the site staff, including one of the administrators, have joined after the game’s release.
• Some of the current trends (such as Elf on Shelf) and inventions we primarily use today (such as iPhones) are no older than this site. In fact, some of them aren’t even as old as the modern era of TBT.
• This site is older than most of the internet memes, including Rickrolling.

Being released in 2004 would sound like that this site is not too old, but when you compare it to the social media, you would be fascinated by these facts. Now if you were to talk about my membership, I at least joined before the Welcome amiibo update, as well as the spin-offs and the birth of another Nintendo franchise (Splatoon). I also joined before the invention of amiibos, the Nintendo Switch, and all of Nintendo’s mobile apps. But I wasn’t a member prior to ACNL’s release, nor was I a member before its first anniversary in the United States. I even published my dream town of StarFall before I joined this site. But I did start playing Animal Crossing before this site was launched. And I had some experience with Nintendo’s gaming before Animal Crossing even existed.