Comments on: Climbing Magazine’s pro blogs aren’t

By: Alpine Climbing » Blog Archive » More climbing blogs… not?

Alpine Climbing » Blog Archive » More climbing blogs… not? — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:48:49 +0000

[...] picked up this from the All Climbing blog, who obviously visits climbing.com more frequently than I do and covers why these aren’t [...]

By: new climber

new climber — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:18:16 +0000

blogging. everyone wants to do it, but few have figured out how to stay interesting and relevant.

the big challenge with these pro blogs is that it isn’t enough to just be a pro climber with a recognizable name. you also have to have something to say.

the rss feeds and commenting tools are, of course, important. but if folks had compelling content without those tools, they’d likely do ok as well.

By: All Climbing Blog - climbing, bouldering, mountaineering, and training » Climbing.com pro blogs follow up

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:45:17 +0000

[...] pro blogs. Apparently, I’m not the only one complaining about this. After some comments and doing some more research, here are a couple additional opinions on the [...]

By: c1sc0

c1sc0 — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 06:38:23 +0000

I kinda agree with splitter chaos. Don’t assume people know RSS, have figured out trackbacks etc … And isn’t it our job (techies’) to make this technology more accessible to them? My experience with Peakr was a very sobering one: most climbers have no clue about technology in general, even less about these newfangled 2.0 things.

While in other activities the audience and the industry are steadily climbing the diffusion curve, the outdoor industry steadfastly remains lagging. I’ve encountered *very* few tech early adopters who are climbers …

By: Gadget

Gadget — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:36:52 +0000

Glad we can comment here!

Many industries haven’t figured out how to leverage most of the internet, instead they use it more as one big advertising strip with no content. Not saying that’s what they’re doing with the blogs, just that it seems to be the primary trend.

With the previous poster’s comments, maybe something will come of this post and more interactive features will be made available.

Thanks for the site. I’ve been reading with great interest as I resume my climbing!

By: splitter choss

splitter choss — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:45:20 +0000

honestly you guys, I think the major issue here is that most “non techy” people don’t really know what a blog is. I hear people refer to message boards as blogs all the time. Maybe some one needs to put on a blog education workshop for the entire outdoor industry.

As for this particular case, I used to work at the mag and am good friends with the webmaster. I just sent him this post, hopefully that’ll get them on track.

By: Climbing Narcissist

Climbing Narcissist — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:04:34 +0000

I’m really glad that you brought this up as I have had the same thoughts and frustrations.

One thing you didn’t mention was the fact that blogs are something that have updated content on a regular basis. With both the climbing.com pro blogs and the bouldering.com pro blogs, the updates are few and far between. In the case of the bouldering.com blogs they had sparse updates for a month or two and then the updates stopped coming.

As for RSS feeds. In this day and age of having dozens upon dozens of sites to get information from, not having an RSS feed is a HUGE negative. Climbing.com has one for their news feed but not for their “blogs”? It is much much more convenient to receive updates from many sites in one consolidated place like an RSS reader and the sooner that sites realize that this will actually drive more readers to their actual sites the better.

The “garish ad” that you refer to regularly interferes with content on the rest of climbing’s website as well.