Ok, I know most everyone is at the park right now, but I’ll be damned if us NRAFs don’t have a thread up for the season opener. Hopefully we can also get some updates about how the tailgating was, etc.
#Athletics' OD lineup vs. Felix Hernandez: Crisp CF, Jaso C, Reddick RF, Cespedes LF, Lowrie SS, Moss 1B, Donaldson 3B, Smith DH, Sogard 2B
— Jane Lee (@JaneMLB) April 1, 2013
What are we having? A tri-tip quesadilla from last night’s leftovers and some rice thankyouverymuch.
Pizza. And whiskey!
A burrito and some beer for me.
Yes, forgot to add the chelada.
In the player intros Nakijima looked like he has been practicing that limp all week…
According to Slusser on twitter, Felix sent a rolex over to Jaso tonight to thank him for catching the perfect game. The guy thinks of everything.
Hush money.
Okay, mlb.tv, this is the moment you should have been preparing for all offseason. DON’T FAIL ME NOW.
There’s no sound on mine. =(
My sound has been turning off when I enter full screen the first time, but exiting and re-entering has been working.
Mine’s working now! Yay.
Bush 2 was still working on his first term the last time the A’s won on opening day. Time to break this ignoble streak.
Yes.
In our defence our band of misfits always run into an Ace on Opening Day.
Felix sure looked nasty
Hooray little yellow towels!
And a lively packed house!
First question of the 2013 season: where’s the rest of Brett Anderson?!
The eldest Aces is officially feeling entitled. He saw them unveil the division wall thing and said “well, it’s better than nothing…for now.”
Heh
BRETT ANDERSON IS ON PACE TO STRIKE ERRBODY OUT.
Brett looks trim!
Jaso has nice hair.
Sogard wearing high socks! Love.
You can all look forward to many more of these deep insights as the game continues. Baseball whee!
Wow, Brett.
That is one filthy motherFKer.
You heard those rumours too, huh?
So that was a good start.
That sucked. Wait, no it didn’t…
http://assets.amuniversal.com/50171a002509102d94d7001438c0f03b
Brett Anderson is pinch-hitting for Coco Crisp.
Infield pop up?
Welcome to the A’s, Jaso.
It’s like Kurt Suzuki turned around.
A 7-pitch inning for Hernandez probably trumps Anderson striking out the side on 13.
Brett Anderson continues to strike out everybody; A’s fielders grow bored.
We have an in shape trainer now too.
This is not the A’s team I grew up with.
The incredibly athletic Brett ladies and gentlemen!!!
What the FK is going on with an injury delay after a ball deflected by the pitcher. Is our Brett OK?!?
He’s fine. It was deflected off the tip of his cleats.
Off his foot/ankle. He threw one practice pitch and they left. He appears fine. I assume we will get a report of Smallpox tomorrow.
Dead by morning.
That was a pretty crazy play by Sogard, flipping it before he even landed. Getting the out at first at least made that fly ball the third one.
I’m glad he’s starting. I don’t think Sizemore would’ve gotten to that one.
Wow. I think I was at the last Opening Day win. I was in high school… there was a long line for garlic fries… or maybe I’m thinking of the 2003 opener. Either way, that’s a ridiculously long time to wait for another Opening Day win.
Uh oh
Yeah
I’m not sure any amount of jinxing is going to help the A’s get a hit tonight. Somebody may need to stick an f’in thing out there to get us a baserunner at all.
Consider it done. Not sure what sticking my dick out there will do to get us a base runner, but I’m willing to do it!
Thank you! We may have discovered something here.
You can all thank me later.
Im already tired of the uverse commercial.
BOOBIES
Also, The King looks particularly nasty so far.
Yay Brett!
Jaso!
Yay – no perfecto tonight.
We’re not gonna be no-hit! Thank you, Jaso.
Keeping that rolex too.
Fitting that John Jaso ruins Felix Hernandez’s early perfecto.
A catcher legging out a double is like hardcore pornography for Fosse.
Oh… my. That beard is… alive, I think. Kind of terrifying.
I think it’s creating too much wind resistance when he runs.
Seriously.
Damn, Ryan is good.
At defense and not much else?
The userpic is perfect.
God, I am so sick of that FKing FKer.
crap
Argh
ugh baseball is the worst
I’ve fallen down the http://textsfromsuperheroes.tumblr.com rabbit hole.
Oh, a thingle!
Better a thingle than a swingle.
Can I just observe the lineup was strange. Lawrie at 5 / Theth at ! Seems wrong
Shit
Hmph. I do seem to be developing an appetite for pie this evening, perhaps in about an hour.
Wow, completely forgot about Ben Sheets.
Hit him. Hit him in the crotch.
Damnit.
According to gameday, 3 of those balls were strikes.
Berkeley’s women to the Final Four!
B7 game 1; too soon to go to the rally cap? I didnt think so…
Alright, boys. We can haz runz?
I think we need to volunteer to do the interleague opener next year. We’ll probably get Strasburg but I’ll take my chances.
Thmathed!
I believe in Coco.
The bullpen! What a beautiful sight.
Well, Felix Hernandez will not pitch a complete game every time this season.
It’s a shame Charlie Furbush and JJ Furmaniak were never involved in a trade.
He WAS in the Fister trade though, so it could be worse.
He could pitch 12 no hitters and I would still picture them laughing about his name in Moneyball.
Noooooo go to Chris Young.
Yeah this is dumb.
Or stay with Jaso and the pitcher who can’t throw a FKing strike!
I would have gone with that. Guy can’t throw strikes? Good. Make him do that.
And Jaso’s good at walking.
And he knows the Seattle staff, and he had one of the precious few hits against Felix.
And that was the key. What, the pitcher just brought in is throwing garbage? Why dont we let him pitch awhile…
I don’t know if Jaso-Furbush or Young-Pryor is the better matchup but I know that Norris-Pryor is by far the worst of the three options.
Yep.
Crazy to PH WITH your 2d catcher.
Agreed.
And people think im crazy when I say that Melvin is a shitty tactical manager
He is way too fking set in pitch hitting by position. Just dumb.
that’s what I was thinking
This what i was screaming at the game…
Me too. Along with some fervent wishes for it to not turn out as poorly as I thought it would, which were shortly denied.
Let’s do it, Derek Norris.
DeNo
We’re gonna do this all season (Norris ph)? Yikes. I wouldn’t even bring in a new pitcher, just say “thanks” instead.
Yes.
Weak swing
And Bob Melvin is 0-for-1 in key PH decisions this season.
I mean, how hard is it to realize that it is impossible to get the platoon advantage in that situation?
What the hell is Fosse talking about?
I’m not watching, but I’ll just throw out a guess: Dibs.
Ok, its time.
Yay Jerry!
…pie?
It’s pretty tough to end an opening day losing streak when you face Felix Hernandez every year.
April fools! Opening day is actually tomorrow.
Sweet.
Go for the gold, boys.
In the last 8 Game 2’s they are 6-2.
This sucks. We’re totally going to lose 100 games this year.
All right. If the A’s draw the Mariners and Hernandez again next year, I think they should just throw the #5 starter in the opener and then follow with the #1 and #2 against the Mariners’ #2 and #3.
Hell, why not?
I’ve often wondered why that doesn’t happen. Better to pit your #1, 2, 3, 4 against their #2, 3, 4 ,5. Sacrifice the pawn to their King.
Some managers used to do that when their opener was on the road, under the pretense that they were “setting up the ace for the honor of pitching the home opener”.
Why do the A’s open up with the Mariners every single year? It is a boring, boring “tradition”.
Felix for the first game for seven more seasons. Joy.
Well at least we didn’t lose cause King Felix hit a homer against us (lolgiants).
We left after 8 for Yoenessa related reasons. Polite of them to teAse us an inning early.
I got the 2012 chills that inning.
indeed. the game was worth it for that. (save the Norris substitution)
I think we have the verdict on that pink onesie.
Yeah. Sounds that way.
Well, phooey.
So Colt McCoy is a 49er now. Yay.
Not really sure why he got such a bad wrap in Cleveland. He probably had less talent around him than any QB in the league, and managed to like reasonably competent, most of the time. Very solid pick-up.
Great seeing all you FKers tonight.
it was perfect.
Sorry I left in such a rush, I was informed that we needed to hurry…somewhere.
we were herded away…
That was pretty unnecessarily agressive. OPD are no fun…
what the?
As AV and I were leaving they turned on their sirens on a nearby tailgate, so stupid…
Uh oh
What. Did. You. Do.
i did not care for it at all.
Hells yeah, that was a great night, most energy at an opener that I can remember, seeing all you guys was the gravy on top!
:D let’s do it again right now!!!!!!
GET TICKETS FOR WEDNESDAY DUDES!!!!
I wish I could have taken a picture of your face when the TV reporter asked you if Theo was your son
Whaaa?
she wanted to have some kids in the background of a shot playing catch. Knowing mine have a tendency to distracted, I told them to get FSU, so he and segundo were on abc 7 live at 5
Awesome, already famous!
Also your progeny are pretty adorable.
lol
who makes the cabbage thing? COleslaw type thing? I want to live in it
I heard it was Bakesale Betty. That stuff is heavenly.
Me. From the Bakesale Betty recipe here (but cut the amount of olive oil in the vinaigrette in half).
awesome.
Oh that was you, do you have a beard?
Yes, we were the ones praising your rice thing.
Awe shucks, mine was a recipe too, nice to have met you!
that rice was teh awesome
Yay!
Yes, good food, beer, company, baseball (outcome notwithstanding) all around!
Good job btw! :)
andy made that
So much fun, great to see everyone. Sorry we bolted so fast afterwards, needed to get sleepy kids home. I will bring the leftover beer with me to Wednesday’s game.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=weather&id=9048888
Woo-hoo!
Awesome, thanks for the link, I’ve forwarded it to the grandparents.
I’m glad to know players are keeping cheat sheets in their gloves.
Yeah, that was odd. She was cool though, told me how her dad took her to her first game in 1969 at Yankee Stadium on what as it turned out was Mickey Mantle Day.
i woulda missed my half-onion, if the cops had given us 2 minutes to fire up a grill and let me cook my other sausage. but they didn’t. sausage blockers.
seriously, i hope it’s not the new way, to kick us out of the lot loudly and menacingly 10 minutes after the game is over.
Hopefully this was a one-time thing, or perhaps something they can only indulge when they have the extra officers that a full house brings.
It’s got to be costly to waste man hours doing that kind of thing. Then again, maybe they don’t want anyone around precisely because of the man hours. So either wasteful bastards or cheap bastards.
Worth remembering (as you know) that cop costs are born by the team not the City/County, and any decision to have cops manage the parking lot in a certain way would be a team decision.
Yes…
WOLFF LIED, THE PD TRIED!
Questions for my RAF friends
-There are discount tickets for kids on line for the Thursday game. Is that available at the box office as well as online?
-Do you think there is a chance that those types of tix sell out?
and most importantly…
-Anyone going to Thurs game? I am going to be on vacation, the kids are still on spring break, and the whole Ace cln may be taking the trek to the park!!!
I don’t know, I was going to find out yesterday but didn’t. Maybe next homestand.
In my experience the half-price kid tickets do sell out sometimes, but usually for high demand games only like fireworks. Most area schools had spring break last week not this week, so you might be OK. Yes, they can be gotten at the box office when available.
I can’t go Thursday, but I know a few folks last night were talking about doing that.
Ralph and I will be there on Thursday!
Cool. I really want to go. Mrs. Aces suggested it and far be it from me to go against her wishes ;) I just need to figure out if I can make the $ work, which is why I want to avoid the “conveinence” fees if I cn…
I will ask at Ticket services today, what is the online offer?
plaza level $14 and $6 for kids. there is an asterisk by it, but no corresponding footnote
OK cool, I will ask at ticket services today, but I think that those offers are available at the box office!
Did you get the note confirming your front row seats over in the other thread?
I did, sorry for the no response. Will try to get the paypal out ASAP.
Grant is an idiot. Sogard would never help him with a 1099 because he is a Giants fan.
also he doesn’t do taxes he makes cookies. good god what a hackjob of an article. way to mail in the glasses bit.
Thanks, and go As.
Here are the dates that I am targeting for tailgates this season, of course we will have other smaller ones throughout the year, but these will be the big super organized ones:
Friday April 12th V Detroit, Gametime 7:05 PM
Saturday May 18th V Kansas City, Gametime 6:05 PM
Saturday June 15th V Seattle, Gametime 4:15 PM
Saturday July 13th V Boston, Gametime 7:05 PM
Saturday August 17th V Cleveland, Gametime 6:05 PM
Saturday August 31st V Tampa Bay, Gametime 6:05 PM
what is up with thw 415 start time?
I dont know, I was confused by that also, it must have something to do with National TV
It shows as a FOX game, yes. Not sure what’s up with that, though. Aren’t they usually 10A/1P for the Pacific timezone?
The FOX windows vary a little more this year than in the past, but for 8 straight Saturdays from May 25-July 13 the window is 4pm to 7 pm PT. That Mariners game is listed as a FOX game. White Sox on 6/1 and Cardinals on 6/29, which in recent years would have been night games, are 1:05 starts because of the later FOX time slot.
It makes for an EST 7pm start time. I’m sure that’s a factor for them. Isn’t this the first season where they no longer black out local games?
I think that is next year, because a lot of the Saturday games will be moving to cable on their new ESPN competitor, Fox Sports 1 (currently Speed Channel, to be re-branded this August).
Oh right. Yeah, it must be.
Whoo hoo!
Are you planning on the May 18th fireworks game with the family?
Haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t even know yet which (if any) of the Upgrade family members are coming to tomorrow’s game with me.
That’s the difference between us and Giants’ fans: we wake up lamenting the Norris-for-Jaso substitution that killed the rally that could have stolen us the game, and they wake up thinking of how awesome the sushi rolls were.
I was listening to KNBR this morning, and they read an email from a Giants fan who went to the A’s game last night and was raving about how awesome the crowd was. Something about how the fans stood up and got loud at appropriate moments without needing a jumbotron to prompt them.
Tonight will be very telling… I am hoping that there aren’t 1200 people there and we get some butts in the seats. I didn’t go last night, but am going tonight (taking the bf, our first game!) for just this reason.
speaking of telling, i’m not telling why the emperor has an extra ticket for tonight, but i’m telling you he’s trying to scare up someone to go with him or find someone already going to sit with.
AV. Are you his bf. And did you just break up with him?
no. :(
Thanks, and go As.
KEEBS.
When I clicked on the video the first thing it showed was a Wendy’s ad with some nerdy-looking guy with glasses Instagramming his fast food lunch. For a second I thought it was Sogard.
Let’s make sure this happens:
Pledging for the party at Korach’s house…
Well, near his house…
That’s the one I picked, though I don’t think it will be at his place. ;-)
I would’ve liked to go with the one-of-a-kind items there but I think the gathering itself will be more worth it.
I would feel a little weird having King’s stuff.
The bobblehead was tempting, but not for $250.
I also considered the notes, I think for $85, or one of the media guides.
Oh, notes are $100.
Me too for the party.
I’m in. Looks like I have a Bay Area trip coming up sometime in July.
If it happens to be on one of my workdays I’ll find the time.
If we have a FK Day tailgate event this year perhaps we should coordinate with that date also.
Eh, I’m betting he does this on a weeknight following an afternoon game which puts it on either Wed. 6/26 or Wed. 7/31. I suppose he might do it on a Saturday morning or Sunday night. I’ll try to make a trip down for an FK Day regardless.
I suppose he could do it over the All Star break (July 15-18), but I imagine he will be squeezing in as much golf as possible then.
Also, since his wife works full-time for the 51s I think he makes as many conjugal trips to Vegas during the season as he can so that rules out most off days.
There were 9 spots left for the party an hour ago, now down to 1.
And sold out.
There are some great photos in there:
I’m trying to figure out whether the Warriors made a trip to Russia at some point. One could probably pinpoint the date based on the width of those ties.
That Denevi Camera ad is so early it predates Dublin, Berkeley and Cupertino.
Pledged.
I’m in. Hey, Slusser should do one of these for her A’s project.
its gonna be all fk
She pledged, so maybe…
Holy Toledo is now just about 75% funded and it hasn’t even been 24 hours. Good sign.
I wonder if it has been lined to at **. If I wasn’t banned, this may be the one thing that would get me to go over there. For Bill’s and Ken’s sake.
From a cursory search, it doesn’t look like it.
How would doing so drive ad revenue? WHO WILL THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS?!?
lol
That’s what halving your visitors is for:
Wow – the sharp decline at the end of last season is pretty damn telling, given what the team was doing.
The plummet starts at the beginning of last season (March 2012). There was an uptick in October, which shows up as the August blip because of the 5-month windowed averaging.
So the 5 month average takes into account the “current month” and the two months prior and after? So the final measurement, which looks to be January 2013, would average unique visitors from November 2013 to March 2013? I understand a seasonal dip and that for a baseball site, December January would probably be the lowest (not taking into account the drama of January 2012), but I’d expect there to be at least some leveling off. That’s a cliff, although I’d expect an uptic come end of April.
Exactly right on the averaging, though it turns out that the lowest month was normally November till this year.
Here it is with no averaging:
That makes sense; nothing happens in November. At least in December/January, you have the Winter Meetings, trades and associated rosterbation.
Yup. If you look at the daily numbers you can also see big games during the season, a visible drop every Saturday, and individual trades during the off-season.
Is the blue line unique visitors? If so, that’s just a shocking fail on their part.
It’s a 5-month rolling average of the monthly unique visitors according to Quantcast.
That’s pretty astonishing (although, not surprising)
I wonder whether SBN sites saw similar dips following the redesign, which to my eyes has been a complete disaster.
What is interesting to me is that you can see both of the great exoduses so clearly.
The first – in early 2009, when the yahoo deal led to absurd demands on unpaid writers – shows up as a huge drop in the views per visitor even as the number of visitors soared. So lots of new yahoo eyeballs but not ones that stayed around.
The second – in early 2012 – shows up as the plummeting number of visitors. Now the yahoo eyeballs aren’t even coming.
Wow, thats pretty sad.
Gee, it’s almost as if intentionally driving away your members hurts your site.
Community doesn’t matter when there’s money to be made…however they’re trying to make it.
I’m assuming money made here is directly correlated to visitors and views, but maybe not. It’s possible that they have secret lucrative pacts to sacrifice members to the Gods of the Hollow-eyed Goat Spammers and need to maintain an unwitting populace to get away with it.
On a related note, I see that Jeff Sullivan has not posted a single comment on SBN since his goodbye post. He has, however, recommended a number of interesting comments on LL, including one entitled “I have seen no evidence that SBN gives a fuck about anything other than page views”.
Perhaps we should be inviting him here.
JEFF SUCKS.
indeed
Well, it’s correct.
Check out the Rec’d comment that branched off from:
http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2013/3/15/4110598/ot-mar-15-the-ides-of-march-ed#151115967
If that doesn’t work for some reason, do a text search for any part of this:
“Jon, some thoughts on the number of posts as it applies to the community”
That whole thread sounds very familiar.
Amendment to LL Community Guidelines banning “inflammatory meta” coming in 3…2…1…
Eerily so.
Since people were asking for site metrics, I almost want to go into that thread and post the above graphic with a “I’ve seen the future and it is horrible” comment. But then I’d have to log in.
I saw that same bit.
Interesting – so the new writing team is required to put up at least 4 posts every day per SBN policy and Jeff and Matthew weren’t because they were grandfathered.
yeah, that is ridiculous. One new story a day is too much, with the reader content aspect of the “Blog.”
People make money in surprising ways to me, I suppose this is why I am not a mogul, I never know what sells.
Rant Sports is requiring 7 things a week from the people who write for them. Whether it’s spaced out or all in a couple days, lengthy or a few paragraphs, it doesn’t matter so much as the count does.
The posting requirements made me go “Are you shitting me?”
It’s clearly quantity over quality. They have to hope eventually it has more quality, but when you demand X amount of content every day, especially for baseball, that’s asking a whole lot.
Game Post 1:
Game Post 2:
Game Post 3:
Game Post 4:
There. All done.
You’d think.
It also makes it impossible to figure out where people are discussing the topic of the day in the comments. The comments were the revolutionary thing about the SBN model, and the combination of the redesign and this spamming of posts has killed them. Now most of their sites are just a crappier version of Bleacher Report.
And that’s how the community developed and others started to find their own voices, be it in comments or Fanposts.
Now it just comes off like information overload, and probably a lot of useless information on top of it, spiking the signal-to-noise ratio (and unique page views) while drowning participation.
I remember that being a problem even with less content
The bleacher report sold for like a quarter of a billion dollars though.
And now more places are trying to follow their SEO model.
I wonder if there’s a connection between this and the departure. Maybe there was an attempted ungrandfathering.
I’m mostly just glad I don’t have to care about that stuff any more.
Without going through all their discussion it’s clear on the surface that the departure was acrimonious. When Jeff got orders from corporate he was able to tell them where to stuff their orders and went off to write somewhere else. N*** doesn’t have that option, most of his self-esteem is probably based on his role on that site, so he would have little choice but to go along.
I really don’t think Nico (I don’t care about hiding the name) has much else going for him aside from being the Blogfather. I sure wouldn’t want my kid getting any instruction from him at school if I had one.
SBN’s free to tell their writers what they have to produce, but one of the biggest reasons I quit being a FP writer (aside from the negative problems it led to) was I’m just not good at writing anything on demand, on a routine.
Not that it really matters, but mostly the **** is because people really don’t want to see that assholes name.
That works too.
Matthew no longer posts there either.
Given that that’s one of their most successful blogs, you’d think they’d leave well enough alone.
Not if history is any indic(AN)ation…
I know, right?
It sounds like they think blogs are dying, and webzines are where it’s at.
Which would be a strange strategy when you have a successful blog site.
“We’re trying to be innovative and stay ahead of everyone else.”
With live comments, the status quo of a small number of quality pieces of content with a lot of activity means that people can sit in a thread all day conversing (i.e. not refreshing the page, creating new page views, and seeing new ads). If you create multiple pieces of generic content with a little activity in each, people will have to bounce from piece to piece to keep up.
If you only care about increasing your metrics, then the course of action that screws over your community members is the unsurprising choice.
That makes a lot of sense, but I think it probably leads to a costly deterioration of audience over time unless the content can stand on its own. Which it can’t.
It does, but you also dont save pitchers for tomorrow because tomorrow it might rain.
It sounds a lot like work. I always have told leaders that if you only have to focus on 1-2 metrics, you can always find a way to make that # look good. The hope is you can find enough new
suckerscustomers to keep up appearances until you find the next pot of gold…Yeah, exactly. If the overarching goal and drive is X, you worry about the potential side effects of X-increasing actions later. And while we as community members can clearly envision and point to the dramatic (and revenue-affecting) drop that the above ** graphic shows, as a business leader you can’t always predict how long the drop will take to reach the point where you start seeing worse revenue than what you had before you fucked with things.
This also part of the reason I’m not likely to return to SBNation. If user experience becomes a secondary or tertiary priority, then things will never be safe. Even if SBN wiped the ** staff clean and installed super excellent people with a sincere apology for driving people away, I would be hesitant to jump in with both feet since of the conflicting priorities and motivations the SBN overlords have.
Yep, a line was crossed and I don’t think they can go back from it now. They threw out the sense of community, the thing that got Blez and whoever else paid to begin with, and took it to the next level of trying to grab as much money as they could without NEEDING the average user’s actual, visible participation to do it.
Problem is, at least to me, enough people are jumping ship that before much longer the path they’re headed down is going to lead to a much smaller piece of the internet pie overall and they won’t even get those random, anonymous clicks they hoped for.
You are basing your assumptions on a premise that majority (or even a significant portion) of the society is looking for quality content. TV ratings should be enough to make you reconsider
great point
Are we assuming everyone’s definition of quality is the same? It’s more or less the same point you’re making, but on the whole, this site’s definition of quality programming is significantly more “highbrow” than the average person. But that doesn’t mean in the sense of the average person, that it can’t be viewed as quality programming. The real question is whether there’s enough of an audience to turn a profit. Dropping quality to the point where people aren’t showing up suggests they’ve dropped it to far.
Probably not, but I am definitely assuming that a demand for X amount of new posts every day is evidence of a preference for quantity (and “new clicks” into things) over quality, whether the quality comes from the writer, the participants or both.
Oh, they clearly have it in their head this is the best way for them to make money going forward (and my well be) but the result is a significant drop off in viewership that’s going to cut into the bottom line in some form or fashion. If they conservatively predict they’ll still make more money out of it (and they probably do), there’s no reason to change the strategy.
I used to say there was no level of quality too low. Then the XFL happened.
And they folded.
This.
That’s stupid. Just set it up so that ads are on the side bars and don’t move. Then have the ads rotate every 5 minutes. Problem solved. If anything, that’s a better solution.
But the amount ads pay to the site are based on site metrics like page views, which aren’t accumulating when people sit in one thread and chat.
Yeah, that’s just a failure of the system. A better way to do things would be time on screen. Who cares if someone entered a page if they either didn’t spend time on the page or never got to a point to see the ad.
ads would be a lot less offensive if they were less obtrusive.
I like google ads fine, they are typically pretty targeted and never stop me from reading what I am reading. (in fact, many times I do a search then wait for the product I was looking for gets to my price point)
But when you slow loading times or make me click out of stuff I accidentally scroll over, you have lost me. I don’t mind clicking through or waiting 5 seconds for an ad if the page loads quickly.
Basically this.
This can also be misleading. I work on multiple PCs and am horrible about closing my applications. Perhaps I am even still in a 2010 ** thread somewhere
They’re still harvesting your keystrokes.
Well, everything could be misleading. iirc you could do something like has focus as part of that measure eliminating that.
@colin But we’re not harvesting Ken Arneson’s.
What a poor harvest it will be
Hey, harvesting’s MY racket.
very nice analysis
Thanks. Part of my job is around online communities, so I think about this kind of thing
I guess this whole thing has many aspects.
Blez/AN/SBN was always being presented as a product of love and an intent to give a casual fan a voice in that infamous online sports bar.
I can see how Blez is buying into this change. He invested a lot of work and money into this, had one smart idea and now wants to reap the benefits. He is doing so by selling out on the whole community mantra, but the question how much money is enough money for him and how much are his dreams worth is the one only he is entitled to answer.
I can also see how some of the front page writers are buying into this change. Previously there was not much special about being a front page writer. Sure, your pieces appeared on the front page, but community discussion often had its center of gravity in user created content. Hell, I had streaks where I easily outwrote most of the FP writers, and many a user had the same. Your only way to grab attention as a FP writer was if you were producing quality content. Or making goat jokes.
But now, the whole thing is much more monodirectional. The redesigns have significantly dampened the community’s ability to create content, both in comments and in posts, and that is no accident. The FP writers are supposed to write and the users are supposed to read, or at least click often. This distinction makes the FP writers feel more special, more as if they were real journalists and you can sense it. They introduce mailbags as a way for normal folks to be able to interact with them, they forbid any user comments in which they question the FPs infallibility, they truly feel themselves above the other users. It is a mixture of The Experiment and Idiocracy.
I find this faux professionalism the most pathetic thing about it and the one that turns me off the most. I still read some SBN content (Sickels and Grant), but I read it despite SBN, not because of them. If they move, I will move with them and not stay with the company, so the value of SBN as a brand is an absolute zero to me.
right. and reading those two without logging in and going directly to their page
RSS. SBN probably doesn’t even know I’m reading it
Oh, excellent point
Good idea
Excellent points about where the real shift has gone. They’re basically putting FP writers on a pedestal, above the common smallfolk.
I wonder what percentage of them are actually getting paid across the entire network now, and if it’s any more than a few bucks a month or something.
I don’t know that. I know what an article on THT, FG or BP pays and I can not imagine a “fifth starter / long relief” guy on, say, ** being paid more than that, meaning that they definitely don’t do it for the money.
Oh, I know it’s not something they’re doing for the money. Just curious what, if anything, is there for even the last guy they have writing for a place.
I believe each blog can choose what to do with their share of the money they generate. I know one college blog, for example, that donates the entirety of their money to the college rather than paying writers. I’m sure some blogs distribute it amongst their writers instead, but I think they get to make that decision after SBN takes their cut.
I looked a few times yesterday and found no sign of it at all.
$240 to go…
It’s happening today.
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So you drafted Johan Santana for $20, right?