Is Cyclingnews Dead?

August 5, 2009

cyclingnews

Of course cyclingnews isn’t dead but I needed a catchy title.  However, I hear one or two people mention every day that they hate the new format and have taken their business elsewhere.   Yes, even though cyclingnews is a free service that we all use, your attendance to their website is making them truckloads of money.  If you decide to turn elsewhere for your news, this hurts them – a lot.  You can bet that advertisers are listening to this backlash and are seeing a direct effect on their traffic and sales.   Here is a good example from Competitive Cyclist’s point of view, an online retailer whose ads you frequently see on cyclingnews and velonews:

In the first 6 months of 2009 our referred revenue from cyclingnews.com (i.e. purchases that occur when someone clicks through our ads there and buys something from Competitive Cyclist) has decreased by 40%. During the same period our velonews.com referred revenue has increased by 50%. Mind you, we always run the same ads simultaneously on these two sites, so it’s not a function of the quality of our ads. Our conclusion based on the money trail is that the shenanigans in the Bike Radar era has driven massive traffic from cyclingnews right into the hands of velonews.com. This is terrible news for cyclingnews, and it suggests that some sort of change had to happen. That change, of course, is their site redesign. We’ll give it 3 months.  [Read full...]

The point of this post of course isn’t to start a whinge-session about the new cyclingnews website format, although you can talk about whatever you like here.   The point of this post is to talk about the relevance of cyclingnews in the near future.

When twitter was first described to me I was like everyone else – why would I waste my time telling everyone how my ride was in 140 characters?  Why would I care what other people are doing?  Valid questions, but I hadn’t yet discovered the power of this simple web service.  It took me about 100 hours of staring blankly at twitter before I began to comprehend it.  Sure, there are a LOT of people out there broadcasting what they had for breakfast and other facts I care nothing about. However, there are a lot of other people out there who broadcast some very useful information.  If you have the tools, you can easily filter out the good stuff.

One thing that I’ve discovered about twitter is that people are constantly sending out links about current news and happenings.  This includes cycling news, results, articles, product news, commentary, etc.  News has become a commodity that’s available in many different places and I no longer need to go to cyclingnews to get my fix.  My cycling news now comes to me, via twitter.

Twitter Dashboards

The power of Twitter didn’t become obvious to me until I downloaded what’s called a “dashboard”.  This is a program that sits on your computer that helps you manage and filter the heaps of noise that comes through on twitter.  Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Nambu are a few examples of these twitter dashboards.

tweetdeck

These dashboards are great because they allow you to add users to groups and filter the information they broadcast.  What information you ask?  Cycling information!  You can do searches for cycling news and results.  For example, I can follow Bradley Wiggins (@bradwiggins) and he’ll let me know directly that he’s releasing his blood bio passport information.  I can follow @lancearmstrong and he’ll tell me that he’s got a new girlfriend (like I care).  Follow @cyclingtips and I’ll broadcast the race results after every race I’m at.  Heaps of different twitter users are continuously sending out links to various news articles and commentary.  You can also follow Cyclingnews (@cyclingnewsfeed) and they’ll broadcast the same types things.  Almost all the major cycling media outlets have a twitter presence.

I can also get news that cyclingnews doesn’t carry. For example, I’m following a local Aussie cyclist named Richie Porte who is racing in Italy.  An incredible up and coming talent, but I never notice him on any English speaking news websites.  I follow Richie (@porteye) or filter his name and also see that a guy @matt_conn is reporting his results from a website I’ve never heard of before.   BTW, Richie is kicking ass at the Giro delle Valli Cuneesi.  He was holding the leader’s jersey until yesterday.

Once you assemble a group of people you want to follow on a subject such as cycling, you can then simply have Twitter search for trends (common things people are talking about) and the news quite naturally bubbles to the top. Right this moment I’m getting cycling headlines delivered from dozens of different sources.  I can either scan the titles, do a search on what I’m looking for, or click the “trends” button to see what’s hot.  Too easy. If you look at one user’s tweet trail it probably won’t be very interesting nor relevant for the most part.  The aggregate of hundreds of tweets and the ability to search, filter and trend is where twitter becomes powerful.

Don’t get me wrong – I do value good journalism and I realize that by reading what someone is twittering I’m only getting part of the story.  You don’t want to start establishing facts from twitter without independent sourcing.  There’s obviously still a need for credible cycling websites to report the news, however as you start to understand how to extract information out of Twitter your choice of news sources become much wider.  You can find a sea of reaction, commentary and links to articles from all over the web. One thing for certain, if cyclingnews doesn’t make their site easier to navigate we’ll all be one step closer to relying on Twitter for our news.  Not good for them nor their advertisers.

If you want to follow an interesting guy and his thoughts on social media in cycling, have a peek at his blog: http://kadisco.com

Tagged as: cyclingnews, news, twitter, twitter dashboard, velonews

  • Baggers of Twitter clearly aren't business people/brains.

    Check out Jeff Jarvis and Robert Scobleizer for insight into the goldmine that is the live data & metadata behind Twitter (and to a larger extent, Facebook).

    Once filtering of Twitter becomes better and better, there'll be some amazing value in the link economy.

    I basically do not twitter unless I have something useful/a useful link.

    -t
  • Simon
    Twitter is a supplement not a replacement. I wouldn’t use it as ‘news aggregating’, more as supplementing the usual channels. You can’t rely on a rider’s tweet to act as a race report or even a measure of his/her own day on the bike. And what happens when they aren’t riding?

    The links are often to either uninteresting photos or their own blog/news items which you’d have read anyway (most journos do this and it gets annoying quite quickly).

    I keep the list of people I’m following pretty short. The comic, Eurosport’s David Harmon @spokesmen, Brad (naturally) and Wegelius. I check out who they and others are following in case something catches my eye but most of the time they don’t grab my attention. Simon Gerrans proved interesting recently because he’s a TdF rider who wasn’t in the Tour. I’m sure George H, Lance and Levi and all those other chaps are really fine people but that doesn’t mean I want to devour every morsel from their verbal table.

    I drop into CN now only when I want minor race reports or stats – the ones not available on my usual stop-off points. The new look takes longer to load (and I’ve always been impatient), and it means tech articles and nutrition are less likely to catch my eye (though it’s partly because I spend so little time there).

    I generally don’t click on ads – partly because I’m in the UK so they mostly won’t apply and partly because if I want something I’ll decide in my own time then go and find it. But I’m already an advertiser’s worst nightmare – I’m short of money, only buy when I can justify the purchase and check everything before I spend. And I use Opera’s Block Content feature to avoid those pulsing, animated Flash ads that gobble up download and processing resources.
  • Civetta
    Except that about a third at least of the stuff I get on twitter is links to fuller stories elsewhere, which generally I’ll cast a quick eye over. For me, the argument here is more about using twitter to build your own news aggregating service, rather than using CN etc. to do it for you. Twitter doesn’t altogether provide that much news in itself (unless you call Manuel Quinziato’s endless coffee breaks or Bradley Wiggins’ alcohol consumption “news”). CTs’ example was Wiggins’ blood profiles being released: well, sure, he said they were being released on twitter, but you had to go elsewhere (CN as it happens) to actually see them.

    As for twitter being “dangerous”, well, people are lazy, but on the whole (apart from the potential LA stalker type you seem to evoke ;-) ), they just aren’t that daft.
  • Richard
    Twitter is dangerous. We all know Twitter fails to give the full story but the worry is do you then go and find the full story.Humans are lazy by nature so we think to ourselves ‘great Lance says he’s bought a new house on Twitter’. What we don’t do then is go out and find where it is, how much it cost him etc. So that means the cycling news websites miss out on traffic they’d previously got from informing us about Lance’s new house. It also means we miss out on getting the full story.
  • Anonymous
    What's wrong with this picture in yesterday's stage in the Tour of Poland:

    http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/66th-tour-de-p...

    Can't blame them from wanting to celebrate the Giro I guess.

    These sloppy mistakes should never be happening by a publication like cyclingnews!
  • Sadly, I agree. CN user interface is dreadful. They made a quaint but useful site into an awful mess. I have to force myself to get over there now, and use VN as my primary source. As testament to CN's relative web naivety, there's no iGoogle plugin either... despite repeated requests.

    Twitter is here to stay I think. A really useful site for cyclists joining Twitter is an extensive list of cycling types who us it, lovingly compiled by Bike biz's Carlton Reid http://www.bikebiz.com/news/29866/Bike-trade-tw...

    I'm on there ;¬)

    Giles

    ps keep up the good work CyclingTips... I follow on Twitter and from my iGoogle plugin!
  • This is list you provided is excellent Giles. Great find! Is there any way to add all of these twitter users all in one swoop?
  • Twoeee
  • You could try using something like http://www.ninjafollow.com/. Or you could be more selective in your choices - it's quite an eclectic list!
  • MrT
    Another favourite for us 'Urban Riders's..
    http://urbanvelo.org/

    And hey, the internet wasn't invented for cycling news.. it was invented for the NSFW stuff !
  • Tim
    One only needs to read Bike Snob NYC (www.bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com) and Fyxomatosis (www.fyxomatosis.com) to be truly up to date in the cycling world.
  • so true. I read both every day
  • Tips fan
    CN was losing it's appeal to me before the change, and the change sealed it for me. I'd already made CT my site of preference. Biggest disappointments with CN - hard to navigate - and I've tried; not focussed enough on the NEWS, more on the back story or attempts at flashy writing. Give me the guts, not the polished journalistic version.

    Regardless of the changes in CN, CT has risen in my web-time because it is fun, easy, and above all else provides me stuff to improve my riding experience - great practical tips, with reference when relevant, to the CN focus of the 'big guys'. I don't like riding because I think I'm a pro, or want to reflect in pro glory. I want to ride because I like to ride and CT makes the riding better. (Also very well written). Great site Wade.
  • Thanks so much Tips Fan - that's the highest compliment that i could ever hope to receive wrt this site. I don't even attempt to compete against the big media channels such as cyclingnews because I don't have the time nor the access. I am thankful however that Matt Keenan is generous enough to contribute here from time to time as we all value his insights and opinions on pro racing.

    I'm just starting to discover how little I know about online media and the industry as a whole. I just started out by wanting to create simple blog and am extremely fortunate that people have supported it. I never thought people would actually be reading it!

    I'm finding that the readers themselves provide the meat of the content and "tips" in the comments section of each post. This is what is making the site better and better as we go on.

    Happy cycling

    WW
  • Twoeee
    The problem with cyclingnews is now it is a direct copy of BikeRadar. The reason I don't use BikeRadar is the crappy non-user friendly interface and now I have to put up with it on cyclingnews.

    Yes web 2.0 has its advantages but only when the features are used in a constructive user friendly manner. Little foresight, and even less originality by the designers and management at BikeRadar.

    Maybe its time to switch to velonews.....
  • Louise
    I agree Twoee both Bike Radr and CN's layout suck!
  • Whopper
    Both layouts suck because they are the SAME. This would point towards both sites being owned by the same company and explain why CN went through the redesign.
  • CN complicated matters significantly, by rolling out before the site was thoroughly tested. So in addition to the usual backlash about the cheese being moved, they also had to contend with people finding significant bugs in the site.

    To add one more comment to the mix, CN still has the access. When I wrote about the Di Luca story this morning, I sure would have liked to have called McQuaid for comment. But I can’t do that from here. CN can. Until that changes, CN isn’t going anywhere.
  • I stopped visiting CN and started following them on twitter. When CN couldn't understand how URL shortening works or didn't work I dropped them. No amount of emails, DM's or tweets I sent to CN could see them fix this problem. So I stopped following, and stopped visiting their site.

    It's just all got too frustrating.
  • Not sure if you're aware, but the url shortening is done so that a massively long link can be sent via twitter without using up the 140 character limit. I think twitter is doing this automatically now (you used to have to shorten it yourself through services such as tinyurl).

    The downfall to this is that you have to trust that the tweet is accurate and that the url isn't sending you somewhere you don't want to go. Full URLs are usually descriptive in their naming and with the shortening it's hard to tell where you're being sent.
  • The issue was that the CN URLs would have spaces in them. So they would submit them to a url shortening service (either directly supplied by twitter or otherwise). But since the shortening service would 'stop' at the space the link wouldn't work and the rest of the URL was plain text after that.

    Email after email I just tried to explain the concept of either going directly to bit.ly or whatever to fix this, or insert "%20" prior to getting twitter to do the automatic shortening.

    They just never 'got' it.
  • Anonymous
    Tweetdeck rules! CN no longer a daily stop for me either, nor any of my old daily virtual stomping grounds. I must have near 100 cycling Twitter feeds alone, as well as various news sites, political sites, and even a few hollywood celeb sites for brain candy. I’ve never felt so informed, and with such little effort.
  • Steno
    Cyclingnews has improved in some respects—not format-related—this year that I really appreciate.

    The quality of writing, respect for the readers, and a non-American voice in English are the things I’ve been especially grateful for. The writing in the race reports and in the live reports has reached a higher level and is often a real pleasure to read, and it’s not always checkered by the desired to slap your forehead and cry lamentations about editing.

    Cyclingnews has responded quickly and graciously to emailed criticisms and changed wrong transations quickly as well.

    Contrast VeloNews, who are less accessible, and whose bias in Tour reporting (namely, the snide attitude towards Contador) has been unbearable, imo. This has been entirely off-putting, and one of the chief exponents was the writer I used to consider the best in the business.

    VeloNews is now in the Fox News category for me. I don’t feel good when I go there. That makes cyclingnews even more important.
  • Majope
    I miss the direct links to stage results and overall standings. Used to be click on race, click on results or overall as desired, and there you were. I suppose it qualifies as a minor annoyance to have to scroll down and look for the list I want, but really—how hard is it to give us direct links?
  • Michael
    The redesign looks as if CN is trying to get you deeper into their site. Good for them since they can put more ads up on the various pages. Bad for us since we want what we want NOW.

    Ever since I discovered Twitter dashboards it is my main source for news in cycling. No messing around after you get it all set up. It's fun too!
  • Michael, you are right, CN is trying to make you navigate deeper into their site however it comes at a cost. CN seems to be breaking one of the most fundamental aspects of good user experience(Ux) by making the user think. They need to take a read of Steve Krugg's book, http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approa....

    The highly compressed images they use detract away from the overall asthetics of the new layout as well.

    Just my $0.02.
  • Chef
    CN was my primary source for news, but since the redesign, I almost never go there. I can’t really put my finger on the reason why, but it does feel like I’ve lost touch with a long-time friend.

    As for VN, I won’t even visit there unless someone links to one of their articles from here. Their shitty translations and lack of objectivity have completely burned me out.

    Another couple of places I’ll frequent are Cycling Fans Anonymous and Race Junkie.

    Thanks for the tip on the Twitter dashboards, but I’m low tech kind of guy; I just want to visit a handful of my favorite sites, and check out the posted links that look interesting. I messed around with a feedburning service, but in the end it was just becoming too much work to filter through everything.
  • Every time ESPN changes their website, I get annoyed because everything is in a different place. In their most recent redesign they made video a main focus, which annoyed me at first. Now I use the video on the main page everyday.

    The problem with Cyclingnews is that they changed how you access their information. I went to CN for in depth race information that VN simply did not have access too. Now I have no idea how to get to that information, and all of their old links are dead. Links to their huge galleries from years gone by.

    I have gone to translating european newspapers and solely reading PEZ and VN. Twitter, has filled the CN void most of all, though.
  • Anytime a site is redesigned plenty of people complain and say "I'm not coming here anymore".
  • Twit
    I refuse to believe that twitter is anything more than a passing fad. Useless!
  • Someone send TWIT a telegram stat.
  • Lachy
    That's it champ, keep your head firmly planted in the sand. When you finally need to come up for some air, maybe check this out http://tinyurl.com/m4f7q3
  • Hollywood
    Twitter is rubbish. It is another fad just like MySpace.
  • Not so sure I agree, but time will tell. What twitter is doing is it's getting more people involved and contributing to the internet than we've ever seen before. By making it simple enough they've made this possible.

    Myspace and twitter have their obvious differences, but a big difference is in the demographic that use these services. More adults and businesses are on twitter than myspace which changes the dynamics of how the service is used.

    Sometimes services like this take a shape of their own far different that the creators ever intended. I'm not sure if the twitter creators just got lucky or if it was in the plan. They'll probably tell you it was in the plan...
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