I enjoyed this read from ESPN — "Welcome to college football's never-ending online tailgate". There's no mention of TKP (thankfully).
This part was particularly mind blowing.
Gates, who served in the foreign intelligence service for nearly two decades before becoming director in 1991, understood the first rule of information gathering: Go where the information is. And in 2002, in his new role as president of Texas A&M, that meant spying on a popular message board devoted primarily to discussing college football.
"I got on TexAgs because that's where the most fervent Aggie fans live," Gates said. "It was a way to see how they were reacting to changes we were making in the athletic program. It was a way to gain insight into how the sort of hardest core Aggies felt."
Now I'm wondering if TKP has anyone incognito.
Comments
Glug glug glug, Joe!
Damn it. Wait a minute, it's vacation. Woo!
The one time I've gotten to speak with Whit I mentioned TKP specifically as the place where I consume 95% of my VT related content. The other portion being breaking news on Twitter and Hokiesports press releases, and I come here to discuss and read analysis of those two things. I don't know that anyone high up in the athletic department or school administration frequents TKP, but I'm sure they have some social media manager types keeping an eye on things here for the big wigs.
Big brother is always watching....
I'm more worried about people going incognito as me in real life.
oh shit.
That would be a tough one to pull off my friend.
I'm super impressed with TexAgs. I hope you pull some ideas from that website, to make this place even better then it already is. They have 20+ staffers and interns on top of that working for them.
I meant that as, I view 2 boards on a normal basis, this one and my NFL squads. I have been told by both that it's very hard to break even.
To find a place that has 20 paid staffers is really impressive to me, and I would personally want to take a look at their business model and how they get paid. For instance, the forums on that page are sponsored by local T&M businesses (Fantastic Idea!).
And even as impressive as TexAgs is, I still prefer the comment system of the KeyPlay over their archaic forum setup.
TKP has the best user interface I have ever seen on any comment board. I did not take a look at their premium stuff though. That costs $1 dollar for a 1 day preview.
Sidenote: The most ballsy thing I saw on their forum is, they had a Political board. Every board I belong to has a strict no Politics stance, and I just wonder how they operate it and keep the peace.
Might not be a bad idea, just quarantine all the political talk to a dark seedy lawless corner. Many go in, but few come out.
They are doing something right. They have 400,000 unique site visitors and over 32 million page views each month.
found a picture of their user tailgate...
A&M has over 640,000 living alums, have a lot more "associated" fans than Tech and have one of the best alumni relations I've ever seen. They have chapters in every state. Hell in VA alone they have ones in Richmond, Roanoke, Hampton Roads and NOVA.
They make money with ads, sponsorships, and subscriptions. Their subscription with all the bells and whistles costs $275 / year (https://texags.com/subscribe). Two of their most popular forums are restricted not only to subscribers, but to students and alumni.
I've stopped short of even having a forum for TKPC members, let alone those who went to Tech. Mostly because there are plenty of diehard Hokies, and quality TKP members, who didn't attend the school. And I also value the community aspect of TKP. Perhaps some aspects are something to experiment with down the road though.
I do too. It took a lot of time and code to get it to what I believe is a rather sweet spot.
Mad props to you. I have been developing my own forum for another team I hold dear to my heart (The one that exists is super archaic), and its a never ending process of trial and error and research to get the smallest things right. The commenting system is by far the best I have seen, and I have only found 1 product that comes very close to it, but its still not it.
*cough*
I totally am not Whit Babcock's burner.
Hi.
Bud Foster here. I hear some of you are questioning my methods and points allowed. Good Im glad you can count...
And you can count on me...waiting for you in the parking lot.