CBS

[gudeatz]

congrats Jim

[scooter]

FWIW, CBS also bought last.fm, a social music streaming site I like, about a year ago, and haven't changed it much at all. (Well, that's not true, the one big change, streaming some complete songs on demand, was wholly positive.) It's kind of hard for me to wrap my brain around, but so far, so good. (Knock on wood.)

[HillJ]

http://nymag.com/daily/food/2008/05/c...

plenty of media clicks on this topic today!

[Phaedrus]

The reports this morning mentioned that CBS is buying CNET to "enhance" their advertising on the web. So I guess we will get pop up windows all the the place of crappy CBS reality shows.

[Jim Leff]

And the gold medal for conclusion leaping goes to.... ;)

My feeling is that any party that takes on the task of hosting this big puppy - a task that very nearly crushed me, and left me weeks away from turning out the lights a couple years ago - is someone we ought to welcome with open arms. And whatever they need to do to make it financially viable for them to do so, and therefore ensure our lights stay on, is stuff we can not only tolerate but encourage and embrace. I saw what running this as a labor of love at a loss, year after year, was like. Believe me, no one else is going to do it (including you!) :)

It's essential to bear in mind how very easy it would be for all of this to simply vanish, including the archives. Shudder. Fare-thee-well, CBS....

[Phaedrus]

With all due respect Jim, you're the one doing the conclusion leaping.

Did I say that I was against CBS buying CNET? Did I ever say anything that would lead you to believe that I was against CBS buying CNET? My comment was about how monolithic companies usually does things, especially when"broadening" their scope, with the subtlety if King Kong roaming through Manhattan.

[Jim Leff]

I was speaking to your ad concerns. I don't interpret CBS's stated advertising strategy as necessarily resulting in the sorts of ads you described. But in any case, my feeling is BLAST me with (non restaurant) ads....whatever it takes to keep this resource from vanishing. Shoot, I'll even click them! :)

If anyone changed our culture, I'll be at least as upset as you'd be! But there'd be little reason to change it. Insofar as we have value, our value is in our culture: savvy, sincere hardcore aficionados sharing high quality info. It'd be obvious to even the most short-sighted that tinkering with the formula would unravel the whole thing.

[Canthespam]

Bottom line is $$$$$$$. If CBS can turn a large profit from Chow advertising, it may stand a chance of surviving. It's all about money, CNET made their money from the clicks onto the advertising on their sites. Chow was never a public service site.

When my husband worked there, until the 10% layoff in March, and people would ask me what he did for CNET, I would tell them that he counted the advertising clicks - one by one :-) He sure misses the comraderie there - I miss the paychecks.

[Jim Leff]

Not sure how this affects me, but thanks anyway! BTW, this line, from one of the media write-ups of the deal, bodes well for us, I'd think:

--------
Quincy Smith [president of CBS Interactive] is a big believer in communities on the web, and one thing that CNet has not been able to do is build big communities, even despite sizable audiences. I expect this is going to be one of the top priorities for the newly combined company.
--------

CNET has, so far, mostly opted to simply let our community and its long-time managers do what they do...without tinkering with our formula (or our autonomy) much. It's worked; traffic has (obviously) grown tremendously, and we continue to draw nearly daily press. Hopefully CBS will see the wisdom of continuing the laissez faire attitude!

[Harters]

"Hopefully CBS will see the wisdom of continuing the laissez faire attitude!"

Hopefully they will also see the great opportunities of attracting in new people by "marketing" Chowhound in other, particularly, English speaking countries outside north America. Of course, on the other hand, it may simply continue to see the national boards as places where American tourists get advice from other American tourists, rather than as a "major player" for that country's own nationals.

For example, the UK/Ireland board attracts minimal numbers of British and Irish people and, outside of London, there are only "single figure" regular posters right across the two countries (with none at all in Ireland). Yet the desire to talk about food experiences is clearly evidenced by how busy are our regional review sites.

But what we don't have is an interactive board website like Chowhound where folk can properly discuss delicious food - a bit of creativity here could bring in hundreds of new members - all with their regional eating experiences; all with their experiences to share on the topical boards; all with their experiences of foreign travel (we tend to visit different parts of, say, Spain, France or Italy, from those visited by American tourists).

John

[Jim Leff]

Absolutely agreed that we need more international penetration. We also very badly need to go more "granular" (I sound like a corporate dweeb) by dividing up some of our obscenely broad boards, geographically. Those two moves would bring tremendous growth.

What we don't need, however, is a broader slice of diners participating. A real flood of unsavvy diners could dilute the knowledge level. As-is, we do a good job of contagiously hipping up the constant stream of less knowledgeable people who arrive here, but that depends on the flow remaining at manageable levels. People have always warned me that the resource wouldn't stay smart as we scaled. But though traffic's now absolutely huge, the info remains reliable and savvy, and it's because we've grown organically, rather than try to forcibly pull people into the discussion.

[Marcharlan]

Great Job.

In this vein, a pure NJ board would be nice. Until now, coverage of the
State has been a strange split.

[Jim Leff]

I have at several points in the site's history come up with schemes for dividing up the country's geographics (though at no point did it actually happen).

And I can tell you that Jersey, much as I love it, is freaking impossible. When you really get down with pencil and paper, NJ does not exist in actual space. It's a state of mind. It's the Everything state. In fact, much of Jersey has more in common with states that aren't Jersey than with Jersey!

[currymouth]

In my short history on Chowhound, as well as being a transplanted NewYorker to New Jersey. I can not agree with you more.

[Harters]

Jim

I understand what you are saying about the knowledge base. However, I don't believe that CH can significantly "break into" a new country without accepting that there may be an initial flood of information not up to "usual standard".

If I may explain further why I think this the case. I came across CH last year when planning a holiday to the US. I would not have come across it searching at home for UK restaurant information. Even if I had, I would have been unlikely to find anything useful as the knowledge base is too limited.

One of the places I was visiting overnight was Asheville, NC. Now looking at the South Board, you find a full range of posts about Asheville - from low to high end dining. And pretty much a range of folk with good to not-so-good general food knowledge. I was impressed. It was helpful.

But compare that with the UK/Ireland Board. Outside of London, you have less regular posters for two whole countries than there are posting about Asheville (and at leats two of them are Yanks who live here). Asheville is a small town of just some 70,000 people. Similar size to British towns like Harrogate and Barrow (which few foreigners will have heard of, let alone visited).

The challenge for "breaking into" a UK market is how you encourage folk who live in Harrogate to find and use CH to discuss their own good (and bad) restaurants amongst themselves. Inevitably, if we want to see good threads about Harrogate places, there will initially be some sorting of the wheat from the chaff. And, yes, some Harrogate folk will post saying what a really great place the local chain pizza joint is. But the knowledgable ones will know it's just a chain joint.

Barrow may not have any restaurants that are really great (it may have - I've never been there, even though it's in my region). But folk from Barrow go out to eat and it'd be great for them to have an opportunity to discuss and it'd be great for the rest of us to see where they do go an eat. And, having found a friendly home, they may then post on the Spain Board about the really great place they found in Mallorca (where I'm going on holiday this September) - and their view is going to a whole lot more useful to me than the total lack of information now there.

I raised this issue in an earlier thread and it was suggested that one should "post and others will find it". As you'll see from the above, I don't accept that policy will succeed (of course, the CH owners may also see things differently to me). However, I have been posting my reviews of meals and, maybe in due course, folk from my region will see the posts and be attracted in. Maybe, CH will continue to grow organically in the UK without any changes. I wouldnt bet my last pound on it, though.

John

[Jim Leff]

FWIW, the stuff I wrote about dilution of knowledge level was not specifically directed to the foreign country issue. Again, I agree with you on the latter...more penetration into other countries would be great.

In UK, as elsewhere, the best thing we could do for growth would be to break the board up into smaller geographical areas. That'd do a lot more than conventional marketing, which, for reasons I explained, might dilute our culture.

[linguafood]

Um, before breaking up the UK in geographical areas, how about adding a few more countries to the 'international' board, even if combining, say, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

As I've said before, I am flabbergasted that there are boards for Russia, Greece and Turkey, Middle East and Africa (!) -- yet there is NEXT TO ZERO activity on them -- compared to regular questions about Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Prag....

[Harters]

And please don't even think of breaking the UK/Ireland up into geographical area. It ain't what's needed to encourage more Brits and Irish to find and use Chowhound. IMO, it would actually be counter-productive. We are but a couple of small islands off the coast of Europe.

I believe the owners will have to make a decision about the UK and other international boards. Do they retain an undiluted and unchanged culture? Or do they embrace the fact that the culture is different in different countries and adapt accordingly - allowing different nationalities to bring delicious food to CH in their own ways?

If the former, those boards will stay pretty much as they are now (except that some of the existing handfuls of nationals will get bored and go elsewhere). Do the latter and "market" it in the right way and it stands the chance of being the roaring success it is in North America.

.

[ChinoWayne]

CBS can send Mr. Leff to roam the U.K, cities and countryside, distributing Chowhound handbills and sniffing out deliciousness, like his U.S. Chowtour.

[Harters]

They can send me and save on the air fare

[butterfly]

Unearthing an old thread... but a first tiny step to attracting International users would be to fix the listing of international boards:

International
Quebec (including Montreal)
Ontario (including Toronto)
Canada
International
Australia/New Zealand
U.K./Ireland
South Asia
Japan
China
Russia
Greater Asia
France
Spain/Portugal
Africa
Turkey/Greece
Middle East and Africa
Caribbean
Mexico
South America
Western Canada
Italy

To me, this jumbled list says: Chowhound doesn't care about or understand geography outside of the US. It's a huge symbolic barrier to participation. I brought this up several times when the site launched years ago, but eventually gave up.

[limster]

I wouldn't interpret it that way. It seems from prior explanations from Jacquilynne, the community manager for CH, that it's been a technical issue that was just not priority compared to say getting the site to work without those 50x errors. There are jumbles everywhere, including parts of New Jersey, which is very close to the birthplace of chowhound.

[butterfly]

I don't see how the ordering of the list of countries under "boards" can be a technical issue... it's been like this since the site relaunched under Chow.com. The fact that the list was ever ordered in this way is bad enough, but that it has stayed that way for two years sends a clear signal that the international boards are peripheral... as others have said, you won't find a lot of people outside of the US venturing into this morass, which is why these boards aren't terribly useful.

[limster]

Here's one of the posts (there's several) that explain the technical issue: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/53739...

My home board is the UK/Ireland, and it's been very useful for me in terms of finding good chow tips, even though it's not as heavily trafficked as other boards.

I don't think the international boards are treated differently from the US ones, very often you'll see complaints about how New Jersey is organised, or a need for a San Diego board. The neglect is quite universal and not specific to any geographical area.

My biggest gripe right now is not board organisation but basic function -- often new posts are not shown when one clicks on a thread, or I get an error saying page not there when I click on myChow. There's a lot of complaints on the Technical Help board, and I hope that the engineering team fixes all these fundamental problems with the board.

[butterfly]

Wow, that's just crazy... Resorting and grouping a list of results from a database query really isn't rocket science... On the sites that I've worked on we could fix that problem in 15 minutes. I really don't get it.

I also often get the error when I click on MyChow...

I don't agree that the neglect is spread around equally. Chowhound is obviously a US site that treats the rest of the world as a tourist destination. The problem is a philosophical one and the way the boards are listed and organized reflects this very clearly--the US is broken into 8 regions; the rest of the world: 1. I still participate out of a sense of loyalty to what I once got out of Chowhound (when I lived in the US), but the 'hounds that I know in my country participate on other boards and (unfortunately) it makes sense for them to do so.

[limster]

The lack of organisation could be due to many factors. If the problems were specific to the international board, I'd agree that there is a bias in the management. But they are not.

if you look at this Site Talk board, there are many requests for a San Diego board. NJer want New Jersey as one board rather than have that state split among several boards. Texans want individual boards for Dallas and other cities. Those requests haven't been fulfilled. But that doesn't mean California outside of SF and LA or TExas or NJ are considered tourist places.

Personally I don't think there is any specific philosophy with regard to any particular set of boards. It's not like CNet or whoever decides that there are "real" boards and there are "tourist" boards. If anything that's the sort of stuff that depends on the people who use the boards as the tone of any board is set by the people that post there. In fact, there are way more tourist-type "where do I eat" posts in the SF or Boston or NY boards than the international boards.

I don't have any loyalty to CH or any board. I post here because it works for me -- it's a site that is very focused on the food and very much grassroots (i.e. the content is created by the poster, not management), with minimal interference from commercial entities. These are the things that I like about CH that I consider unique, and that's why I come here, it's not loyalty but practicality. If these properties go away, I leave too.

[MMRuth]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that those boards are currently ordered by board number, and that reorganizing them in some more appropriate way is apparently more difficult than one might think.