Dave Meltzer stuff

[El-P]

Twitter references are to WWE in 2011 as charity event videos were to the WWF in 1993.

Ouch ! It's pretty bad then.

[kjh]

I can't wait for the Stand Up For WWE Again campaign!

[jdw]

If you're trying to argue that talking about trending on Twitter like it means something isn't a reflection of insecurity, you could probably pick a better example than a band that hasn't been mainstream in like 20 years.

And if you wanted to make that argument about a band you could probably pick a better example than this year's Coachella headliners.

 

Friday: Kings of Leon

Saturday: Arcade Fire

Sunday: Kanye West / The Strokes

 

Duran Duran weren't the headliners on Sunday.

 

John

[KrisZ]

WWE isn't the only one working with Twitter as they are currently recruiting more companies and sports to further integrate the brands with each other.

 

In fact on X Factor on FOX Tuesday night they had a graphic that was showing how many tweets X Factor was getting per minute.

[jdw]

That said... lots of "hip" elements of American are attentive to Twitter. Dave isn't. I suspect Bryan will be, if he isn't already, since he tends to be far advanced of Dave in terms of Tech.

 

BTW: does WO-4 use facebook feeds at all to pimp their new articles and newsletters when they get published? I get stuff on my feed all the time from Grantland... Kos... MediaMatters... Rachel... KO... Deadspin... Snowden's pieces... Bix's pieces... and on and on and on. I know Bryan on occasion would pimp that strange show he'd do, but can't recall a lot else.

 

Pat McNeil does some of his stuff, though I don't think Wade has been as hip about new "key" articles as most. Not saying he should use his personal fb for it, since he's tried to keep that separate from Torch stuff. But the Torch fb page would be a good vehicle for at least key stuff (rather than every one of 20 pieces that goes up in a day).

 

Bryan or Dave hip to that at all?

 

John

[KrisZ]

http://www.peterstringer.com/2011/10/wwe-%...n-in-social-tv/

[Eduardo]

Luke Thomas just asked Meltzer on their Sunday night interview, "what's it going to take to get you on twitter?". Meltzer admitted that he should be on twitter and that its inevitable, but that he's way too busy to be on twitter.

[Bix]

If you're trying to argue that talking about trending on Twitter like it means something isn't a reflection of insecurity, you could probably pick a better example than a band that hasn't been mainstream in like 20 years.

And if you wanted to make that argument about a band you could probably pick a better example than this year's Coachella headliners.

 

Friday: Kings of Leon

Saturday: Arcade Fire

Sunday: Kanye West / The Strokes

 

Duran Duran weren't the headliners on Sunday.

I definitely saw promotion for stuff like the YouTube broadcast with them getting equal billing, but at worst they were the #3 act on Sunday.

[Bix]

That said... lots of "hip" elements of American are attentive to Twitter. Dave isn't. I suspect Bryan will be, if he isn't already, since he tends to be far advanced of Dave in terms of Tech.

 

BTW: does WO-4 use facebook feeds at all to pimp their new articles and newsletters when they get published? I get stuff on my feed all the time from Grantland... Kos... MediaMatters... Rachel... KO... Deadspin... Snowden's pieces... Bix's pieces... and on and on and on. I know Bryan on occasion would pimp that strange show he'd do, but can't recall a lot else.

 

Pat McNeil does some of his stuff, though I don't think Wade has been as hip about new "key" articles as most. Not saying he should use his personal fb for it, since he's tried to keep that separate from Torch stuff. But the Torch fb page would be a good vehicle for at least key stuff (rather than every one of 20 pieces that goes up in a day).

 

Bryan or Dave hip to that at all?

I don't think so. To be blunt, F4WOnline.com a completely ineffective website in 2011.

 

They've largely abandoned Dave's better known brand to the point it exists mainly as a forwarding domain and the name of a few pieces of content on the site.

 

They first added "Share on [X social network]" buttons a few weeks ago.

 

There is literally no search engine optimization, something that is of utmost importance to all sites nowadays. Until you see the internal stats, you don't realize how much traffic on wrestling sites comes from people searching for WWE, TNA, CM Punk, Jeff Hardy, etc. on Google News.

 

They've largely been siphoning unique visitors for well over a year based on the public traffic estimating sites (which, in fairness, can be inaccurate but are the only gauge we have). They're too complacent and need to figure out that they need decent free content with good SEO to push the pay site further.

[jdw]

Third from the top on Sunday on the main stage:

 

http://coachella.com/event/set-times

 

Pretty much the same spot as Mumford & Sons on Saturday, who got a fair amount of run in the build up.

 

But in terms of billing, it was Kayne, then The Strokes and then Duran Duran on Sunday. As it should be. Kanye was touring in support of another #1 album, The Strokes had recently released an album that got to #4, and Duran Duran were touring in support of a record that topped out at #11. Coachella also has been trying to move a bit away from headlining with / anchoring around / overly pushing older/reunion acts and instead trying to be a bit more "current". AF, KOL and Kayne all had chart topping / near chart topping albums in the second half of 2010.

 

Not trying to knock DD too much here. They got a fair amount of respect being in the #3 hole on Sunday. Don't ask be WTF Animal Collective were doing in the #2 hole on Friday, unless it was simply a matter of them not wanting to put Mumford and AF back-to-back. Clearly Mumford were the #2 on that night, and like I said earlier got a pretty big push in the hype.

 

John

[rovert]

That said... lots of "hip" elements of American are attentive to Twitter. Dave isn't. I suspect Bryan will be, if he isn't already, since he tends to be far advanced of Dave in terms of Tech.

 

BTW: does WO-4 use facebook feeds at all to pimp their new articles and newsletters when they get published? I get stuff on my feed all the time from Grantland... Kos... MediaMatters... Rachel... KO... Deadspin... Snowden's pieces... Bix's pieces... and on and on and on. I know Bryan on occasion would pimp that strange show he'd do, but can't recall a lot else.

 

Pat McNeil does some of his stuff, though I don't think Wade has been as hip about new "key" articles as most. Not saying he should use his personal fb for it, since he's tried to keep that separate from Torch stuff. But the Torch fb page would be a good vehicle for at least key stuff (rather than every one of 20 pieces that goes up in a day).

 

Bryan or Dave hip to that at all?

I don't think so. To be blunt, F4WOnline.com a completely ineffective website in 2011.

 

They've largely abandoned Dave's better known brand to the point it exists mainly as a forwarding domain and the name of a few pieces of content on the site.

 

They first added "Share on [X social network]" buttons a few weeks ago.

 

There is literally no search engine optimization, something that is of utmost importance to all sites nowadays. Until you see the internal stats, you don't realize how much traffic on wrestling sites comes from people searching for WWE, TNA, CM Punk, Jeff Hardy, etc. on Google News.

 

They've largely been siphoning unique visitors for well over a year based on the public traffic estimating sites (which, in fairness, can be inaccurate but are the only gauge we have). They're too complacent and need to figure out that they need decent free content with good SEO to push the pay site further.

 

 

18 months ago they raised the price a dollar to employ Admin Tony FULL TIME

[Bix]

That said... lots of "hip" elements of American are attentive to Twitter. Dave isn't. I suspect Bryan will be, if he isn't already, since he tends to be far advanced of Dave in terms of Tech.

 

BTW: does WO-4 use facebook feeds at all to pimp their new articles and newsletters when they get published? I get stuff on my feed all the time from Grantland... Kos... MediaMatters... Rachel... KO... Deadspin... Snowden's pieces... Bix's pieces... and on and on and on. I know Bryan on occasion would pimp that strange show he'd do, but can't recall a lot else.

 

Pat McNeil does some of his stuff, though I don't think Wade has been as hip about new "key" articles as most. Not saying he should use his personal fb for it, since he's tried to keep that separate from Torch stuff. But the Torch fb page would be a good vehicle for at least key stuff (rather than every one of 20 pieces that goes up in a day).

 

Bryan or Dave hip to that at all?

I don't think so. To be blunt, F4WOnline.com a completely ineffective website in 2011.

 

They've largely abandoned Dave's better known brand to the point it exists mainly as a forwarding domain and the name of a few pieces of content on the site.

 

They first added "Share on [X social network]" buttons a few weeks ago.

 

There is literally no search engine optimization, something that is of utmost importance to all sites nowadays. Until you see the internal stats, you don't realize how much traffic on wrestling sites comes from people searching for WWE, TNA, CM Punk, Jeff Hardy, etc. on Google News.

 

They've largely been siphoning unique visitors for well over a year based on the public traffic estimating sites (which, in fairness, can be inaccurate but are the only gauge we have). They're too complacent and need to figure out that they need decent free content with good SEO to push the pay site further.

 

18 months ago they raised the price a dollar to employ Admin Tony FULL TIME

 

I'm not disputing that they're doing well based on the number of subscribers. The problem is that they're making no effort to do any better.

[jdw]

There is literally no search engine optimization, something that is of utmost importance to all sites nowadays. Until you see the internal stats, you don't realize how much traffic on wrestling sites comes from people searching for WWE, TNA, CM Punk, Jeff Hardy, etc. on Google News.

Or been around a long time following the search business.

 

I don't have the stats, but do see how things pop up... and how traffic for our company's products are driven via search. So I certainly have been able to guess. Not the numbers, but what generally drives.

 

Since Dave and Bryan's business is subscription based, they largely haven't thought deeply in terms of traffic and getting articles out.

 

But lordy... if Dave was even smart about his Yahoo stuff, he'd learn to drive traffic there when he published articles... and inturn drive traffic from Yahoo to his own sight.

 

BTW... has someone like Snowden ever thought of approching the PFT/CFT/PBT empire over at NBC about having MMAT? Florio has turned a freaking small blog into a large blog into a gig on TV. Guys are on Versus (soon to be NBS Sports) regularly as well. Yahoo's MMA coverage, to be frank, it pretty shitty relative to even the content that Dr. Saturday rolls out on a given week on Yahoo... and on top of that Yahoo throughs up tons of other non-blogger pieces.

 

I'm not sure if Dave and/or Iole have grasped the traffic of PFT/CFT style blogging with multiple pieces a day _and_ a willingness to link all over the web to other articles. Dr Sat seems to grasp it. Say whatever you want to about Florio, but he and his team get it.

 

I'm thinking Snowden might be the type of person who could do it as well. He writes both longer pieces several times a week that can get across that he's a thinking of some weight, but he also is the type who could churn out 4-5 other short "news" items a day as well.

 

I don't know what NBC pays its CFT guys, and NBC also just got out of the MMA business with UFC leaving... so they may not love MMA. But Florio... you've got to think he's making some serious coin now. People not a bad idea to get into that... and if the Yahoo folks aren't smart enough to get into it, someone like Snowden probably should.

 

Fox is in bed with UFC, and seems to be pushing their web content quite a bit more in the past could of years (Glazer especially). UFC is pretty bitchy about bad coverage, so Fox might not be a place for Jon given how much bitching head have to eat, and crap from his bosses. But who knows.

 

John

[jdw]

18 months ago they raised the price a dollar to employ Admin Tony FULL TIME

And the site still sucks? It's not like he's spending all his time admining The Board, right? 18 months... wouldn't part of that have been to redesign the thing? Yikes...

 

John

[Bix]

We've had this discussion before, but even the pay site should be overhauled into a series of articles that are collected into the newsletters on Wednesday for print subscribers. Then they can either make some of that stuff free or add some additional content specifically for the free site, etc. It's absurdly outdated.

 

And they need to make sure to not throw terribly homophobic book & DVD reviews on the main page.

[jdw]

We've had this discussion before, but even the pay site should be overhauled into a series of articles that are collected into the newsletters on Wednesday for print subscribers. Then they can either make some of that stuff free or add some additional content specifically for the free site, etc. It's absurdly outdated.

Totally agree on this.

 

And they need to make sure to not throw terribly homophobic book & DVD reviews on the main page.

Yeah... that would be a good idea.

 

From your other post, it sounds like the Kanyon book is good. He'd been working on it before his death? Does the co-author indicate how far along they were, and what is anything he had to fill in from others?

 

John

[Log]

Even then, the issue on Raw is really that it's WWE talking down to the audience and revelling in their own awesomeness rather than presenting it more like a celebration of the fans as a collective like it was at the concert. It's in the tone. When the tone is different, like Cole gleefully celebrating that "anal bleeding" or whatever it was that he said that trended a few weeks ago, it didn't have the talking down issue because it was clearly meant to be funny more than anything.

 

Then there's the fact that numerous prime time network shows are openly and actively trying to trend using on-screen graphics with hash tags and such. WWE is just being more annoying and ham fisted about it BECAUSE THEY'RE WWE. That's how they are with EVERYTHING and it has nothing to do with the concept of pushing Twitter hashtags in general. Twitter references are to WWE in 2011 as charity event videos were to the WWF in 1993.

 

WWE comes across insecure in the process because they're insecure, not because of how they choose to express their insecurities.

I especially liked how, during the Sheamus match, Cole talked about how "Great White" was trending. I don't know if he was being tongue-in-cheek or what, but I'd guess that was more because of the shark attack over the weekend.

[Bix]

From your other post, it sounds like the Kanyon book is good. He'd been working on it before his death? Does the co-author indicate how far along they were, and what is anything he had to fill in from others?

It looks like it was complete and they added posthumous thoughts from the co-author, friends, and family.

[KrisZ]

Even then, the issue on Raw is really that it's WWE talking down to the audience and revelling in their own awesomeness rather than presenting it more like a celebration of the fans as a collective like it was at the concert. It's in the tone. When the tone is different, like Cole gleefully celebrating that "anal bleeding" or whatever it was that he said that trended a few weeks ago, it didn't have the talking down issue because it was clearly meant to be funny more than anything.

 

Then there's the fact that numerous prime time network shows are openly and actively trying to trend using on-screen graphics with hash tags and such. WWE is just being more annoying and ham fisted about it BECAUSE THEY'RE WWE. That's how they are with EVERYTHING and it has nothing to do with the concept of pushing Twitter hashtags in general. Twitter references are to WWE in 2011 as charity event videos were to the WWF in 1993.

 

WWE comes across insecure in the process because they're insecure, not because of how they choose to express their insecurities.

I especially liked how, during the Sheamus match, Cole talked about how "Great White" was trending. I don't know if he was being tongue-in-cheek or what, but I'd guess that was more because of the shark attack over the weekend.

 

No it was because of Sheamus because it also trended worldwide on Sunday night also. Sunday & Monday were probably the best two-day stretch the WWE has ever had on Twitter just dominating the worldwide topics.

[jdw]

I notice on WO-4:

 

"Follow @bryanalvarez and @wonf4w on Twitter"

 

And saw a plug pop up on my fb feed.

 

John

[soup23]

We've had this discussion before, but even the pay site should be overhauled into a series of articles that are collected into the newsletters on Wednesday for print subscribers. Then they can either make some of that stuff free or add some additional content specifically for the free site, etc. It's absurdly outdated.

Totally agree on this.

 

And they need to make sure to not throw terribly homophobic book & DVD reviews on the main page.

Yeah... that would be a good idea.

 

 

 

Totally agree with this aspect. I never go to F4W at work because it is so embarassing how the website looks. Its just too easy when hundred of people walk by your desk every day for someone to say. "What is that your looking at" and them being unsure based on what the site looks like. This really bothered me when I was a paying member. I am giving $11.00 a month to the site, is it too much to ask that I don't see Shimmer DVD's and Ultimate Demolition with makeup on the frontpage.

[flairchops]

We've had this discussion before, but even the pay site should be overhauled into a series of articles that are collected into the newsletters on Wednesday for print subscribers. Then they can either make some of that stuff free or add some additional content specifically for the free site, etc. It's absurdly outdated.

 

And they need to make sure to not throw terribly homophobic book & DVD reviews on the main page.

I'd be shocked if we saw a major overhaul. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm convinced Bryan/F4W doesn't give a shit about how their website looks or has thought much about the user experience on the site. That's not to say they don't work hard on the content - you get two newsletters and a ton of great radio content, but the presentation looks terrible, the content is awful to navigate, and their servers consistently have issues on big news days (though much less than in the past). I don't know specifics of numbers, but for what I'm guessing they make off of subscribers they could hire a professional web designer to make the site usable and find a dedicated hosting plan that will grow with their needs.

 

And I deal with it because I want the Observer online every week and I'm going to continue subscribing unless they drastically jack the prices up on me. I don't think I'm the only one who subscribes for this reason, and I'm guessing they know this, so they probably don't worry too much about the site unless it completely blows up.

 

Hopefully I'm wrong.

[BruiserBrody]

Homophobic book review?

[Ditch]

Homophobic book review?

Look at the 'comments from WO columnists' thread.

[Ronnie]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm convinced Bryan/F4W doesn't give a shit about how their website looks or has thought much about the user experience on the site.

I don't agree at all. For a start, you only need to consider the money that Bryan's invested in his audio equipment to ensure that he delivers audio content that sounds so much more professional than his competitors'.

 

As far as the site is concerned, he's taking an interest in it right now. One of their forum members proposed a redesign and Bryan came into the thread to say "I like it" and then returned after a few tweaks were made to say "Original one def my fav". He -- entirely justifiably -- doesn't bother posting in most of the threads there, yet checked back to see the progress being made and responded favourably.

 

The proposed look doesn't change the layout of the page much à la Bix's idea but modernises the appearance so that it looks as though it actually belongs in 2011. It still has that vile logo though.