Follow-Up: 2015 TKP Survey and TELL-a-thon 2.1

Brace yourself, it's time for meta.

At the beginning of the year I posted The Key Play's 2014 Metrics, 2015 State of TKP and TELL-a-thon 2.0. It included a summary of website statistics, demographics, a survey, my rationale for keeping TKP free, its need for money and plans in 2015. I sincerely appreciate the wonderful feedback in the survey. Any good business is going to solicit and listen to advice from its customers, and over the course of the last 2.5 months I've tried to improve upon the most common suggestions from the 645 of you that responded.

robobuilder nudged me a few weeks ago and asked for an update. My original plan was to publish what you're reading now on March, 14, TKP's 5th birthday (only 13 more years until I can boot this thing out the door), but it was a Saturday and I just started writing this at 11:19 PM, March, 17. I've been entrenched coding updates for TKP, many of which are already in production, and haven't had time to focus on anything else. I'll discuss more about what's new in a minute, but first some pretty charts from the survey.

The TKP'er who identified their gender with "sexual tyrannosaurus" was a lurker, which is disappointing because I was hoping for an explanation.

Age skews as I expected, 18-34 is the overwhelming majority of users. 1995 Sugar Bowl highlights, since that game was probably before most of our times (mine included).

That's pretty a pretty powerful message. If you've ever thought of advertising with TKP...

There's not enough data to draw any conclusion from this. It's a question I'll ask in subsequent years.

If you wondered why so much coverage was devoted to Buzzketball, that's your answer. And kudos to Brian and Pierson for delivering fresh insights throughout the season.

Substantial updates have been made to TKP's technology stack to address specific problems.

1. Search has been overhauled. The previous version was butts, and the new search is fast and is indexed directly from TKP's database to provide the best results. I also added a title filter to the tracker as another means to find threads.

2. I added a toggle switch to comments. If you click the switch it will dim all the other comments except for the current comment and all of its ancestors. Another way to think about it is the switch highlights the current family of comments by dimming all other comments.

You can flick any switch in that comment's "family" to turn all the comments back on, or click a dimmed switch to highlight a new family. Folks asked for a better way to visualize / find parent comments, and this is what I came up with. I didn't want lines all over the page, and I think it works well. If you're in a long thread with a lot of branching comments, you can flick a switch, then scroll up and easily see all the relevant replies.

3. Collapsable comments are also a thing. Click the ∨ in the comment header to collapse a thread, then > to expand it.

Collapsed threads are remembered on a per device basis. I used cookies to store the data, and more often than not those won't sync between devices. So in most circumstances if you collapse a thread on your laptop, and view it on your iPhone, it won't be collapsed. If you collapse a comment, all the comments threaded underneath will be collapsed too, the same thing happens when you expand. This should be a quick and easy way to ignore a section of a comment thread, or make a longer thread more manageable to navigate.

Expect more updates to be rolled out throughout spring and summer. TKP is an agile technology company as much it is a media business.

I wrote the following before I hit you all up for cash in January.

My plan for The Key Play in 2015 is to: 1) grow non-revenue sports coverage; 2) expand existing football, basketball and high school recruiting coverage; 3) find a couple of new voices to add to TKP's already diverse offering (if you're interested); 4) update TKP's technology stack (beginning with an improved search experience); and 5) be TKP's best year yet.

Point Five is still a work in progress, as it's only March, but otherwise things are going as I planned. Alex did an excellent job shining the light on Tech's wrestling program as well as cranking out recruiting features. Joey Coogan's baseball coverage has been fantastic. French, Mason, Alex and Will, will all cover spring football—we'll try not to overwhelm you.

According to the survey, 553 of you indicated The Key Play was worth something to you when asked "Hypothetical: If The Key Play became a subscription website, how much would you pay for a subscription per month?".

Thus far in 2015, 152 of your have supported TKP. As of March 17, readers have generously given The Key Play $4,012.42 in one-time payments in 2015, and 32 people are on a recurring plan to give a total of $172.50 a month.

Those of you who think TKP's worth a subscription fee, or those that have been on the fence about making a financial contribution, I need your help to keep The Key Play growing. Any contribution, whatever you're generous enough to give, will help make TKP a community that can better serve you.

The major vision of Orange and Maroon Media, LLC, the business that owns The Key Play, is to hire its first full-time employee, a beat writer that answers to, and works for you, the diehard Hokie fan. In order to even consider that a possibility, financial support from the readership needs to hit $40,000 a year.

1. Click the PayPal button below to financially support TKP. And if you really want to be an All-American, make it a recurring payment. If you're a registered user, you'll get a gold star next to your user name. If you're a lurker, you'll get a sincere thank you email.

1a. Because this question has been asked more than once... If you don't have a PayPal account and want to mail a check:

Orange and Maroon Media, LLC
3057 Nutley Street, Suite 633
Fairfax, Virginia 22031

2. Buy The Key Play merchandise in our online store: shop.thekeyplay.com.

3. Shop at Amazon with this link

4. If you own or represent a business consider purchasing a sponsorship \ advertisement on The Key Play.

5. Share the stories and articles we publish via Email, Facebook and Twitter.

6. Organic growth has been a key to TKP's success. A good deal of Hokie Nation knows about the website, but many folks do not. I need your help to reach those people who don't have Twitter or Facebook, who have never seen one of French's film reviews, or who are stepping foot on campus for the first time. Would you tell a friend or friends about the website the next time you're discussing the Hokies?

Thank you for your continued patience, patronage and support.