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Subject: The future of RotoGuru and the forum
Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Tue, Aug 14, 2012, 18:03
This discussion is totally separate and distinct from the concurrent thread related to the Politics Forum, which has its own unique issues.
Way back in the early days of RotoGuru, the forum was an active place for a variety of discussions. A lot of that was centered on the Smallword/TSN games, which were the games on which RotoGuru cut its analytical teeth. And of course, at the time there were not many social media alternatives. Places like the RotoGuru Forum were the social media of the day.
In recent years, the forum has been much less active, and most of the participants are holdovers from the early years. Message forums such as this are a relic of a bygone era, replaced by chat rooms and other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
As an old fart, I haven't been an active user of the mainstream social media. I do have a Facebook account, but have not set up a RotoGuru page, and am unsure whether doing so would even make sense. I also have a Twitter account, but have never tweeted anything.
I've devoted more effort in recent years to the development of DailyBaseballData.com, and that site is now providing the lion's share of RotoGuru revenue. And while the daily contest sites are generating a lot of activity (and during the baseball season, DBD gets five times as many site visits as RotoGuru), the daily contest format hasn't generated much interest here - at least at the forum.
I'm starting this thread just to open some brainstorming discussion on the direction of RotoGuru in general, the forum, and the role that alternative social media could/should be playing.
If you were running the RotoGuru empire, what would be your direction?
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| 1 | Khahan
ID: 54138190
Tue, Aug 14, 2012, 18:38
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I would look back to my roots as a discussion forum for strategy towards different types of games. You had a great relationship w/ the smallworld people, direct access and were a forum for their boards.
Are there any gaming sites you could team up with again? Offer your boards up as a discussion forum for their users. Their are benefits on both sides. It would generate traffic for you again and would eliminate their need to maintain their own boards. Kind of a sublease situation. I don't know the ins and outs of hosting gaming sites so maybe this just wouldn't work anymore.
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| 2 | The Beezer
Dude
ID: 191202817
Tue, Aug 14, 2012, 19:14
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As an active user of social media, I would still be saddened if the forum were to be closed in favor of a Facebook or Google+ group, or some other sort of hosted structure. Moving to another platform would likely lose a significant portion of the community, and that's the biggest asset the forum has right now.
I use Facebook groups and Google+ and I don't think either of those would really get traction from a community standpoint. Too many distractions - the nice thing about this being its own site is that everyone is here intentionally.
Twitter is a nice publicity tool, so you might explore creating an account for DailyBaseballData.com and posting a "DBD tip o' the day" to drive traffic to the DBD site. I don't see any value from Instagram or Pinterest for you that would be worth the trouble.
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| 3 | Seattle Zen
ID: 3603123
Tue, Aug 14, 2012, 23:15
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Guru -
Yes, things certainly have changed since this board's inception. I am more than just a regular in the Politics Forum, I like to contribute to threads like the College Football season thread because I like to hear what the other regulars think. I also appreciate participating in RIBC and Market Madness.
I'm sure there are lots of people who agree with me, but probably not enough for a business model. If DBD is generating enough business to keep the Forum afloat, I sure hope you have the patience to continue to keep it alive.
And why haven't more Tri-State area Gurupies taken Dave out to a Yankees v. Indians game or something like that?!?!? How many years has it been now since he got that Matt Williams jersey? I'm 3000 miles away, you guys need to keep our man Dave happy!
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| 4 | JeffG
ID: 15859720
Sat, Sep 08, 2012, 16:50
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I was first drawn to rotoguru.com because of an essay devoted to smallworld baseball strategy and the statistics offered from Dave's mathematics background (Even thought I am in IT, I too came from a math background) made me understand and appreciate that there is such a deeper level to being competitive in fantasy sports than traditional box score scouring. Similar I guess to the deeper analytics that now go into most sports teams front offices.
I was hooked to the stats and loved his unique game offerings for the NCAA tourney market madness, football pickoff and gurugolf. There was not and still is not anything like them and I imagine they would all be wildly more popular games and widely more utilized stats if more people knew about it.
When the forums started up, I really felt an attachment to the gurupie community and still enjoy interacting with so many like minded sports/fantasy fanatics. Rotoguru.com was my first exposure to social networking. Not sure if replatforming this of FB or G+ would generate a similar community spirit.
I absolutely love the RIBC format with the deep rosters and tiered leagues, and am so glad it has lasted as long as it has.
I am unfortunately one of the folks who is on the forums much less, and am not always reading the blurbs as soon as they are published as I once used to, as Guru alluded to.
I'm not sure I have any answers in how to grow the brand. There are so many fantasty advice sites now but none quite captured the angle regarding the metrics this site has and none have addressed the daily games (I do no gamble so am not a daily player) so I think there is a viable niche.
If I had the keys to this site, my first question is what type of site would I want it to be. There is no doubt a huge fantasy sports boom since this site was first around. If it is to remain one supporting fantasy games daily and otherwise with the analytics approach that this site is known for then perhaps the content needed is the types of thing that got me here like essays on strategy. That would draw people here and then regularly scheduled recurring features or blogs are needed to keep people checking back in. Maybe that would even generate more forum activity to give this site a shot in the arm. I also think that the main rotoguru.com home page needs a little facelift, as most websites redesign their look and feel every couple of years.
Anyway, there are my two cents. Regardless of how this plays out, you'll always have me coming back, and I will always be appreciative of what this site and its regulars have meant to me.
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| 5 | koz-ivan
ID: 228111110
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 11:11
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long time lurker, i'd post very rarely, under the username "ivan"
the smallworld games were what drew me here in the first place, the dynamics of those games a general pool of money (hopefully approaching 85 million) - and a talent pool consisting of everyone. made the resources of this site very valuable, primarily the sartible stats and the strategic discussions "randro" or the projected gainers & losers for example.
most of what i knew about those games i learned from reading the blurbs & forums, and i preferred using the simulators and the stats here vs the tools on the smallworld site.
even as a then fantasy rookie, the info provided was easy to apply and to soak in, i never became a fantasy genius, but i won the office pool a few times.
then seemingly everything changed, games went to draft / auction style. with that i noticed i'd only really read the board in pre-seasons. the draft discussion & rationale threads are still really good resources - but harder to apply to other leagues & scoring formats.
there seems to be less applicable info in the forums (for me) these days.
likewise, there seems to less general info type threads - when the focus changes from what is happening in a specific sport to a series of drafted leagues then the relevance of the forums drops for folks like me.
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| 6 | holt
Donor
ID: 308491916
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 17:52
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Facebook is a juggernaut. Most of us probably use it to some extent. Haven't thought about it much, but I'm sure that facebook could be a helpful companion to the forums. I can't see it ever replacing the forums though. You could start a rotoguru facebook page and see where it goes. I'd strongly recommend it. It probably wouldn't require much work as most of the activity would just be interaction between gurupies. A lot of exposure would be generated (friends of friends of friends). Me and my brother have a goofy facebook page, mostly devoted to pasting the heads of our facebook friends on other pictures and we've had a reach as high as over 2,700 people in a one week period (without really making any concerted effort to reach a bunch of people).
The forums have a nice static quality that facebook could never replace though. Facebook is always moving. You may or may not see a post... posts in a forum like this one seem to carry more weight. Like a book that goes on a bookshelf compared to a magazine that goes in the trash.
A facebook page would help gurupies stay connected from year to year and might stimulate inter-league discussion during the season. Forums like this one have never been extremely conducive for light-weight talk during the season. I don't come into the RIBC thread and mention how my team went 22 for 37 yesterday. Would most likely do it on facebook though! I don't see how it could hurt anything as long as the forums continue to be used the way they are currently used. Once you see the activity generated, specific ideas for income generation may become more apparent.
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| 7 | Perm Dude
ID: 577543120
Tue, Sep 11, 2012, 18:39
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Facebook would be an interesting complement to this site. Many people, like myself, get FB updates all the time but check in here far less often.
Guru, you should start an Official RotoGuru Facebook page. Setting up a page is really easy to do.
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| 8 | Guru
ID: 330592710
Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 14:46
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I just started a RotoGuru facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/rotoguru
Not at all sure where this will go, but I'll never figure that out if I don't start.
Facebook users - feel free to "like" and we'll see what develops.
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| 9 | allhair allstars
ID: 4611820
Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 23:20
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Like JeffG, I was initially hooked by a Guru article on SmallWorld, although the one I read was geared towards hoops. Many, many moons ago.
Back in 2004 I cajoled a friend to work with me on building a website for my work fantasy league, complete with a message board based (not so loosely) on the RotuGuru boards in it's various incarnations.
Over the years, there have been times when I felt that that message board came pretty close to providing a space for the level of camaraderie that always seemed present on RotoGuru. RotoGuru was my first true experience with an online community - one that led to an awful lot of instant messaging at one point - and quite a few face to face meetings with fellow Gurupies over the years.
It's with the general sense of loyalty to those experiences that I still visit this place periodically (albeit usually in full on lurker mode)... I get a lot of news via Twitter, but I am a pretty infrequent visitor to FaceBook, and neither of those venues offer the same ability to build a community the way a good message board can... and very few of the message boards I've frequented since those early experiences will ever come close to replicating the community that formed here over the years.
Anyway, my experiences with my own message board have similarly led me to look for other ways to enhance the quality of the user experience. Many forums provide for enhanced forum signatures, user image galleries, internal instant messaging or private messages... other ways for users to inject a little personality into their online persona. These are all gimmicks, of course... the backbone of an online community is the shared interest that brings the users together in the first place, but I don't see the harm in integrating some of these features. Newer (younger?) users are used to more bells and whistles in their online experience. When Yahoo is able to provide smack talk and rudimentary discussion forums on their league pages, I wonder if the essential (mostly) text message board can compete for attention.
I remember very fondly the board leagues and games run here. SmallWorld (I think I still have a SW hat around here somewhere) and TSN made that easier with their ability to host large leagues, but one of the biggest drivers was the discussion of strategy... and a lot of that strategy was built around the collective learning how to play the game itself. And the unique tools offered here that assisted with that process. (I didn't start playing rotisserie until quite a while into my SW/TSN experience. I think that's weird in retrospect.) When RotoHog came out I remember there being a similar push to learn and beat the system... but that ended up being somewhat short lived, I think.
Ok, I'll stop rambling. Succinct, I'm not. The point is, in my opinion, very little has actually changed here at RotuGuru (and I know I have an old RG hat in my closet somewhere). I'm not saying that cosmetic changes will result in massive membership or anything, but adding some user-focused options and user-based tools may help.
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