Usage at CC.com in decline

[Raindawg]

And apart from punks outin' avatars and thus arbitrarily hijacking one's own choice out of sheer malice....

 

This site must be runnin' some sort of cookies directive as cc.com is sending me adds for 30% off Talmud and other Jewish religious texts...which I have no problem with other than it seems that I'm being "tracked" from my internet use elsewhere, and it has little relevance to my visiting this climbing-themed web-site.

[olyclimber]

Ah google. You crack me up!

[tvashtarkatena]

I get Christian singles ads. -sigh-

[JasonG]

Maybe this was already posted, but has usage actually declined? As in posts, TRs, unique users, etc.? I would think Jon and Co. would have this data at their fingertips.

 

 

[jon]

We appreciate the feedback. For those who wish to give it in a more anonymous form feel free to use out contact form here http://cascadeclimbers.com/contact/

 

This is our 13th year of CC.com. And the world has changed a lot since then. I don’t want to sound like I have my head in the sand, but I see cc.com surviving right now, not necessarily dying. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can improve here, there are tons as there always have been. But consider this: 2006-7 was our peak usage. The iPhone was just released. Facebook and Twitter were infants.

 

Since then there has been a war for your attention, and now it has moved from your desktop to your phone, and now it's moving to your other devices (Pebbles, FitBits, Netflix etc). There are billions of dollars being pumped into these companies who’s sole purpose is to compete for your time, content, money, and become integral to your lives. So, it’s remarkable in a way that we are still here.

 

Are posts down? Yes. Are pageviews down? Yes. Are visits by core return visitors down? Not so much. So while people are not posting, they are still reading in droves. I don’t want to sound like I’m not disappointed this has happened, because I am, but I’m also realistic about the above, and take some solace in the fact our traffic is such that we’d likely survive financially even if nobody was posting. Being self sufficient financially was a goal from the start.

 

Something that did happen this year is in the last 12ish months we have had 3 offers to buy cc.com. We turned away all of them, mainly because none where in the best interest of the community and your content.. We are in this for the long haul.

 

Moving forward I will add a better photo uploading capability; you guys deserve it. Whether we abandon the photo gallery or not is up in the air. In the next couple months we’ll have some clarity on which forum solution we will be moving to, which will be much more modern then what we have now, and will have a great mobile experience.

 

I’ll have more a bit later.

[layton]

Jon,

 

I think you guys were working on this but it never panned out.

Organize trip reports like mountain project organizes their routes. To do this you could integrate tags of state, area, route? #washington #enchantments #acid baby. This would populate a list on the side you could navigate through. Moderators could edit the tags to keep things together and organized.

 

Right now TRs are just blindly guessing a route is in the system (or that you even know the route exists)

[JasonG]

Thanks Jon, good to know. I know you guys work hard to keep this place up and functioning and it is appreciated. And thanks for not selling out!

 

Although I've gotten used to it and have a system worked out for getting photos into TRs, I agree that improving that functionality will help the cause.

[skykilo]

#FacebookSux

[olyclimber]

Nah it's great for staying in touch with my parents.

[Bronco]

I'm sure everyone has their reasons for not posting as frequently. Life is busy and I don't get out much. Also, as I get older, I'm realizing my comments are probably not as witty or important as I thought they were in 2001. I think racked up pretty close to 3,000 posts from whenever I registered through 2004 and now try to limit posts to what I hope will help someone sort through gear or provide what little route info my meager brain is able to recall. Not so much of the spray or "good job" on some anonymous person's TR.

 

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to kill a few minutes reading up on the website when I can. Got me through some pretty boring days. Thanks to Jon, Timmy and Oly (and the rest of you rich 1% moderators).

[spionin]

so many good points.

 

i was reading this tr on turns-all-year the other day, and i remember anticipating/dreading a sh*tstorm of a response. like, "wow, the poster is going to get ripped to shreds any second now". and you know, there was none of that. people who chose to comment gave their digital high-fives, said "better luck next time", and welcomed the first-timer to post again. no one demanded an in-depth self-deprecating step-by-step analysis of the trip.

 

every forum has its share of people who'll spew bile from behind their computer screen. anonymity=safety. and i'm sure there's a lot of ripping going on everywhere else, but that particular tr made me think that it was akin to a group of people hanging out at a bar, talking about a trip, and saying things to each other that they wouldn't be embarrassed to say to each other's faces. you know, like a club.

 

not this place! nah-ah! welcome to the jungle, baby. and yeah, like mark said, i don't have a thick skin either. i shrug my shoulders, but it just wears you down eventually. it doesn't have to be g-rated (boring!), but it needs to be a little more civil at times.

 

 

but onto the comments and suggestions for cc.

 

- admittedly, i don't really know much about blogging (don't got one) or posting pics on fb (don't got one), or posting photos from a smart phone (ditto), but i'm guessing you're already hosting your photos somewhere. is it possible to just copy and paste the rich text into the cc trip report box? meaning the photos would be hosted elsewhere, but they'd still show up here.

 

- in line with the previous point, i think it would be nice if people posted their whole TRs, and gave links to their blogs after that. i never end up clicking on the blog links because i look at the "trip reports" tab here for, well, trip reports. not personal blog ads.

 

- back when i used to post to partners' forum, i had practically zero luck with responses. i think helping people build some kind of a "background" would be very valuable. Gaucho A had asked many times about a capability to be "tagged" in trip reports. i think you'll see a spike in traffic when everyone goes back to their reports to tag previous partners (if you let us edit old TRs)

 

- an organized tr repository would be a huge plus. i love ivan's reports as much as everyone else, and he can continue writing his bizzarre/brilliant titles all he wants, but at least they'll be filed under "rocks" instead of "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawks" or whatever.

 

***************

 

and thanks, guys, for doing amazing work on this site. it's really a great resource (once you learn to filter). and i think we need more pub nights. i've loved meeting people at talks like at feathered friends, and introducing ourselves partly by our cc avatars.

[mountainsandsound]

- an organized tr repository would be a huge plus. i love ivan's reports as much as everyone else, and he can continue writing his bizzarre/brilliant titles all he wants, but at least they'll be filed under "rocks" instead of "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawks" or whatever.

 

I call those Hunter S. Ivan TRs

[Bronco]

How difficult would it be to make a mobile app?

[Stefan]

13 years. Been a long time.

 

that is one in the win column of life for you Jon.

 

 

[olyclimber]

How difficult would it be to make a mobile app?

 

this really would be achieved by migrating to a forum software product that has a mobile app already in place. a couple of them do...

[LUCKY]

How difficult would it be to make a mobile app?

 

this really would be achieved by migrating to a forum software product that has a mobile app already in place. a couple of them do...

 

Oh NO, anonymous mega posts and pictures of food from smart phones ...

That will help the content

[olyclimber]

Lucky, it would be for Pubclub selfies.

[Bronco]

How difficult would it be to make a mobile app?

 

this really would be achieved by migrating to a forum software product that has a mobile app already in place. a couple of them do...

 

Oly - Eh?

 

LUCKY - I doubt we'd see people posting pictures of their quiche. More like being able to easily access cc.com (the matrix) from your phone if you had a few minutes to kill and see whats up with the 1%ers.

[rob]

I have a cc.com mobile app on my phone, it's called chrome.

[Bronco]

Rob, I cannot be troubled to open a browser, zoom in and login to the website on my phone when there are buttons for other apps/distractions right on my screen available with one solitary click, like the TGR app. I am old and don't have a lot of time left. cough cough.

 

Really it's probably something the brain trust has considered before and I'm not sure if its even feasible. I realize TGR generates a bunch of revenue with other parts of their business that allows them the luxury of doing stuff like that.

 

[G-spotter]

I'M RUNNING A CC.COM EMULATER IN REAL TIME IN MINECRAFT ON MY PHABLET

[AlpineK]

Replace Spray with Angry Birds

 

[img:center]http://www.freevector.com/site_media/preview_images/FreeVector-Angry-Birds-Characters.jpg[/img]

[olyclimber]

tbh u guys r awesome

[Rad]

I, for one, am grateful for all that you have provided thus far. I feel like I got my money's worth, and I even donated at one or two points. Thank you.

 

I don't have miracle suggestions or cures. Like the rest of the interwebs, this site has both garbage and gems. I'm able to skip the former and find the latter when needed. I have some stories I hope to write up in TRs at some point, but I've been busy with A, B, C... Z. I'm not here as often as I was before, but I have not left the building yet either.

 

[jon]

Mark, you had a lot of excellent feedback, but I want to focus this right now time allowing.

 

And then I have to post my own tr on my blog-climbing page. So that is three times I write a tr, for every trip: Facebook, CC, and blog.

 

Not that I'm complaining...it's fun sharing photos and stories.

 

Couple ideas:

improved image uploader, similar to facebook where multiple images can be uploaded at once, and you get a visual reference for the image you are describing.

 

The ability to post a tr in an iframe? Don't know if that would work. So you could write your normal tr on your blog, and embed it in an iframe on cc.com?

 

Improving the image uploader is a big priority. So much so I might create a new one for our forum software to buy us a bit more time before we switch products.

 

Regarding using blogs, it really would be great if people copied their content over from their blog instead of just posting a link, but I realize this is a byproduct of the friction of adding photos on cc.com. I might be daydreaming a bit here, but I could see us at some point allowing you to put a link to a WordPress blog post and we would automagically copy the content and photos for safe keeping on cc.com. For those of you who blog, I really encourage you to use a WordPress.com blog. It's free and your images will be stored forever.