NEW YORK -- One fun part of our fifth anniversary celebration Tuesday came during a Q&A session we did with about 50 or so readers out on the Highmark Stadium terrace, mostly consisting of questions about sports, some about the site.
One reader asked where I thought this venture would be after another five years.
I initially pawned off the microphone to Hunter Homistek since he's, like, 17 years old and could speak better to the future. But upon taking my turn, I answered with a single syllable: "Tech."
We need better tech. You deserve better tech. And for the company to break through to the next level, even if neither of those things were the case, we'd be best served by staying on top of new ideas and innovations toward making our site and app a step ahead of anything else out there.
Which sounded great, I'm sure.
But much later, once I was home, the bigger issue hit: How?
So I started thinking about how to make our tech better and came up with three options:
• Fix the existing platform.
This would be the least expensive, though still reaching into five figures, but it also wouldn't really solve anything. As I've told readers before, this is a Frankenstein platform constructed from about two dozen different plugins. It's a freak. That's why stuff works on Apple but not on Android, etc. We can't make any of it communicate.
So yeah, I hate this option more than you hate the Flyers.
• Partner up and move.
This wouldn't be expensive, either, and it's something we've been considering for months. My wife Dali and I will fly to Los Angeles in a couple weeks for meetings to explore this further. But, even though we'll always retain a controlling ownership of the company, we wouldn't control the platform anymore. So a lot of the little things that make the site what it is, even stupid stuff like the coffee cups, could be lost.
• Start from scratch.
This is our dream scenario.
We could build a fully functioning site and app that allows us to transition into the future, while also offering you options that don't currently exist: Faster load times, less usage on your phone battery, sharing content with friends, working off a more advanced commenting board, reading articles and view photos/videos the way you want, blocking ads, tons of things that have become routine elsewhere.
Also, we could put that fully functioning site and app into motion to generate more revenue for us. Without boring you with the details, just as an example, faster loads and other streamlining would allow us to rank higher on search engines and be seen by more potential new readers. That kind of thing.
You can guess the issue with this one: It's enormously expensive. And because we already have a very large database and (thankfully) a very large number of subscribers, that would only add to the price tag.
This business, as I've written many times, does OK. But a capital investment of this scope is about a billion miles beyond our capabilities.
What to do?
I honestly don't know. And it's hardly any kind of emergency, so I'm not being dramatic. Again, it's just something I started thinking about because of the reader's question. It's something we'll need to do at some stage of this venture.
If anyone's got any serious ideas for raising capital for that third option up there, we're all ears. One concept we learned about already, from one of the readers in attendance, is called a direct public offering, or DPO. It's like a stock sale, but not really. It's more like the way the people of Green Bay own the Packers, by buying small shares in the franchise. Only with this, the money invested by the shareholders has to be applied to a very specific use, with full accountability for all.
Anyway, this is a little too layered for a regular old Site Stuff. Any questions about this, I'll take them in comments.
LIFETIMES RUNNING OUT!
These are starting to run out and, as we expected, they're accelerating as the supply gets lower. We've sold 82 Lifetime Lunatic subscriptions, including two more this week, so only 18 remain toward our cap of 100. It costs $299. If you'd like one, buy it here. If you're an existing subscriber and want to go Lifetime, do the same thing, then email us at Help@DKPittsburghSports.com to let us know. We'll refund the remainder of your existing account. -- DK
VETERANS COUNT: 249
We've had 249 military subscriptions bought for the year, and we're in good shape in terms of filling requests. Remember, Josh DeNinno at Moon Golf Club is pushing for us to reach 1,000 for the calendar year through his Veterans Challenge to our subscribers. Josh is buying 10 a month himself for a total of 100 in 2019. Here’s where to contribute. -- DK
BECOME A PARTNER
We're always looking to grow our base of business partners, and there currently are several very good opportunities available to take advantage of our unprecedented reach. Our 2019 media kit has all the info you’d want. Email me directly at Dali@DKPittsburghSports.com to set up a meeting. -- Dali
BACK TO BUSINESS
• New subscribers for 2019 are at 588. You can now track this figure daily at the bottom of the desktop and tablet versions of the site.
• Our daily active app users, averaged out over the past week, are at 13,002, broken down as 10,411 on Apple, 2,591 on Android. That total's minus-119 from the previous week. This figure will always fluctuate with the seasons and the news, so the goal is a steady, gradual increase, initially to 15,000, a number we've never achieved.
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past 30 days, are at 87,051. The goal with this figure is to average 100,000 — a number we've achieved only during the two Stanley Cup runs.
• Our most-hit original article of the past week -- exempting live files -- was Taylor Haase's exclusive reporting of Garrett Wilson signing with the Maple Leafs at 35,357. She also had our No. 2 file, the one on Phil Kessel's house being for sale, at 22,715. The Penguins accounted for 120,442 page views, the Pirates 112,368 and the Steelers 109,999. Tightest split between the three teams I can recall.
• We're at 32,775 (+72) followers on Twitter, we're at 32,050 (-30) page likes on Facebook, we're at 11,143 (+56) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
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