Following Rex’s departure from MNspeak way back, I pretty much stopped going there let alone commenting but my site was finding itself linked from MNspeak time and time again generating pretty decent traffic with many new visitors subscribing and becoming repeat customers. I was very thankful for the local exposure and while I wasn’t an active participant in the discussions (mainly due to the Group Think that I believe goes on there — which happens on any Internet forum I suppose) I do believe that the site served its purpose and served it well.
Well, last week what was known as MNspeak merged with The Rake to become Secrets of the City. Secrets of the City (also known as SOtC whose users known as “SOCers” which is supposedly pronounced “suckers” by some in the local blogosphere) is, at first glance, a gorgeous site with plenty of information and lots of features that regulars have been missing since the original MNspeak switched hands. Unfortunately, some others feel that when you start navigating it you realize that the layout is less than optimal and the information provided is done so in a manner which is counter productive, especially when you’re looking to maintain the same sort of traffic that MNspeak used to generate to local blogs around the metro. I certainly don’t agree with Andrew Zimmern on much (especially his support of Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers which immediately disqualifies him from being any sort of “worthy” food critic IMO) but I have to agree with him on Secret of the City’s strange layout and content flow.
If MNspeak’s historical traffic shows anything, it would appear that the general public agrees. Following a above average number of visits as people came to the new Secrets of the City domain from a variety of external locations (many of which were talking up the emergence of the newly-wed site), traffic originating from SOtC to lazylightning.org has dropped sharply since. Using statistics provided by Google Analytics, I have done a quick comparison and analysis of the traffic received from MNspeak vs what I have received from Secrets of the City and have found the new site to be severely lacking in redirecting locals to external news as it was the original intent of MNspeak.
That said, if we look at the entire year of my MNspeak traffic, we find that I had six posts generate over 100 visits from MNspeak with the top generating 196 and an overall median of 57 visits. Based on what I saw today, which was a measly 8 visits from SOtC, it would appear that people just aren’t clicking through on links. There could be any number of factors in play here including:
1. Too many posts stacked on top of aggregated content for people to sift through.
2. Not enough interest in the links provided (I received over 50 visits for other RollerGirls related posts in 2008)
3. People are tired of the blogs being aggregated.
4. A lot of SOtC users subscribe to the blogs being aggregated and have already viewed the content.
5. Other content is more worthy of discussion.
Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s hard to judge Secrets of the City based solely on a week’s worth of traffic. To back up my claim that link clicking has plummeted, I have heard from two others that are frequently linked from SOtC who have mentioned that their visit counts are in the single digits as well. At first I thought they were just crazy being that I received over 115 visits on my first link day from SOtC but after watching another day go by in the mid teens and then a full day go with a single digit visit count (8 as of this writing with 6 occurring before 9 AM), I figured there had to be something else going on to cause this.
While I am no web design master, it would appear that by stacking so much differing content on top of each other, the original goal of MNspeak which was to be a local news aggregator, has been outdone by too much “stuff”. I have absolutely no solution other than to separate out the aggregation from the article posts and see if that improves the traffic to the external sites. If traffic out to linked sites isn’t the goal then I’m not sure what good comments are on those posts. People should be reading the linked material and discussing it. If no one is visiting, then no one is discussing — something which seems to have been a problem ever since MNspeak instituted the “no anonymous posting” rule a few months ago. While this requirement solved some problems, it seems to have created more that may have been unforeseen including solidifying the Group Think mentality and reducing the number of comments posted by users.
I do wish this new site the best. The site could be really awesome if some simple changes were made to provide the information in a better layout. If getting people to read external sites isn’t the goal anymore, well, I apologize for sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Otherwise, I really do believe that any site needs feedback and input to get better.
Are you a ex-MNspeak or ex-Rake reader and have you tried out the new format over at Secrets of the City? What do you think of the new layout — fan or not? Are you a blog author that received linkage from MNspeak and have also received linkage from SOtC? If so would you be willing to share your traffic results between the two sites? Either way, comment on, I’d love to hear what you think!
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November 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
[...] Zimmern, Bill Roehl, and peeps on SoTC (formerly MNSpeak) have weighed in on what they think of the new site. Time to [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I had the exact same experience.
What REALLY irks me though is why they would ditch two perfectly good brands for a completely new one that has nothing to do with either and doesn’t make all that much sense.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
What REALLY irks me though is why they would ditch two perfectly good brands for a completely new one that has nothing to do with either and doesn’t make all that much sense.
I still don’t get that part either. I try to give Matt B the benefit of the doubt because I don’t do this for a living and thus make my decisions differently but… Enh, I think it makes a lot of sense, but wasn’t necessarily a good idea.
To be fair, they were pretty responsive throughout the week with regard to design tweaks for easier reading. I think people’s opinions of the impact of the change will vary a lot based on what they put into and got out of MNspeak in the first place. I think for the comment hanger outers, it’s not that big a deal. I think MNspeak was badly in need of a design refresh and a back end up grade anyway.
Back of the envelope says Metblog got about 50-55 visits per link over the last year from MNspeak, and something like 20 visits per link in the last week from SOtC.
fresh.mn’s only been around since beginning of November so the data’s totally skewed, but the #s say 16/post from MNspeak and 30/post from SOtC.
It’s really hard to tell on a week’s worth of traffic data, but Ed’s point (in his pingback) about comment volume is a good one.
I doubt Matt Bartel is gonna spill much about his traffic data, but my question would be is there anyone who regularly linked *to* MNspeak before (or not) that is now changing their linking behavior?
November 25th, 2008 at 8:05 am
I blame ethanol.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I typically get 100-200 visits from being linked on the old MNSpeak so I’ll know today whether or not SOtC gets the same amount of traffic. To me, the MNSpeak brand “said” more about what the site was and SOtC is more vague because, hell, what city are they talking about? For someone new to the local blogosphere, SOtC isn’t going to instantly click as being about Minnesota and more specifically the Twin Cities. It makes sense to roll a successful and rather heavily trafficked site like MNSpeak into Rake Mag and rebrand the whole shebang. I think it will stick and grow because it truly is one-of-a-kind but any new design and format takes some getting used to.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:54 am
It’s been said a thousand times, Max links the same sites over and over and it’s boring.
Luckily, now Max is a “Writer” for the Rake half of the site so he has that going for him. Heh.
Even MnSpeak’s traffic was way down and the comments over the last 6 – 12 months seem like they’re from the same 5 people. Which would explain the groupthink you mention.
That’s the one thing no one has really talked about, the site has been lame getting lamer for quite some time and SOTC is just the nail in the coffin.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
I know people complain that Max links to the same sites, but I’d be interested to know what the undiscovered gems are out there that he hasn’t been posting.
I do miss the quick/easy way of discovering people’s personal sites by clicking on their MNSpeak username.
And I find that most of the frequently posted links are already in my RSS reader, so I’ve already read them.
I like the changes made to SOTC, I think the brand change was stupid (I think they’d have been better sticking with the MNSpeak brand, and folding the Rake into it– but that’s because I felt a connection to MNSpeak and not to The Rake.)
Part of the issue is that people are getting busier at work. There’s less time to screw around. I think if MSPe… I mean, SOTC, wants to grow– they need to have someone college-aged in there posting regularly. Get it to spread among young people. That way when they are in their low-20’s, they’ll be the ones taking over. A lot of us who were there at the beginning of MNSpeak are getting older, busier, and less active on the site.