Unless I can't avoid it, I don't link anything in my horse racing blog posts to The Daily Racing Form. Why? Because they require registration to read their articles. Most of the folks that I personally refer my site to have not registered with the drf. I'm talking about folks who are not the avid horse racing fanatics that I am. These more casual fans like to get down on the occasional pick six carryover and want to see the Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup, but don't know what a minus pool is or what Poly track is made of. They will not spend the time to register and release their personal data in order to read even a spectacular article in The Form, or anyone else that I link to.
Thus, if a similar point is covered by The Blood-Horse, or the Thoroughbred Times, or even MSNBC, I will link to that story. The Form may eventually find themselves marginalized because of the changing dynamics of the horse racing coverage, but by then most of us will be in such a habit of linking to other content providers that they wont likely recoup this viewshare. Luckily, most of the horse racing coverage out there is still linkable without registration. Especially, those who write horse racing blogs.
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5 comments:
I spied this article this morning.
While I agree that the premise is both excellent and true, it's still hard to see the print material evaporate.
Hopefully "alternative racing media" will continue to gather attention.
I didn't mean to imply The Form would cease to exist. Just that they may forgo the subset of readers that would otherwise view their content from links propagated by hacks like me.
I too hope, and firmly believe, that alternative racing media will continue to grow. I sure enjoy your take on racing one state to my north.
In general, I've been disappointed by the DRF site. I suspect that part of my troubles come from using Firefox as my browser, but still -- why can't there be a simple box called "Member Login" on the first page? Overall, I find the navigation kind of clunky - it always feels like they want my money and then they'll treat me better, but sadly, even after I opened an account and purchased some pp's, I had a hard time getting to where I wanted to go. What's your experience been?
Good god, yes I have been disappointed with their site. They desperately need a content architect. Shoot, if you're just signing in on another computer (or if your cookie has gone missing) you can barely figure out how to get in without creating a new account.
With regard to this, I asked a buddy who works for a web development firm, and she said sometimes this is a tactic to boost registration, and thus can garner more ad revenue. The idea being that 1 million people viewing your site once per week will yield more advertising revenue than 500k people visiting twice per week.
I get the feeling, though, that it's not a conscience decision, and rather they just don't have the expertise to structure their site in a more user friendly manner.
Oh, I didn't think you were implying that at all. I am more depressed by the fact that every year, the racing stories in my local paper become fewer and farther between.
And for the love of Pete, the DRF site can be miserable! I have to log in every two minutes, it seems. I don't get it.
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