Taste test: New Colts versus Old Colts

I think we’re doing the right thing, but there’s always “New Coke” to think about

In a few short weeks, MyColts has already grown as large as our fan forum on colts.com, which has been around for several years. We believe it has the potential to surpass not just forum traffic. It could grow larger than our entire our flagship site, colts.com, in terms of page views.

One of the main reasons we built mycolts.net was that we saw fans on our colts.com forum talking to eachother. In fact, the fan forum is one of the emost popular sections of colts.com. If they want to talk, and they’ll create content, then let’s give them even more tools to use, right?

Yet even as we moved forward to build a broader communications platforms for our fans, we were picking up signals that the folks who frequent our Fan Forum on Colts.com may be different, behaviorally, from other folks who woul participate in our “community” site, mycolts.net.

So far our theories seem to be born out. Mycolts.net is growing day by day even as the forum on colts.com remains strong. Different Colts fans seem to desire different experiences. Imagine that! Niches within niches

So while fans joining mycolts are happily posting photos and adding friends, the comments we’re reading on the (colts.com) Fan Forum indicate that these stallwart Colts chatters like the old way best. They are visiting mycolts.net, but they prefer the comforts of their trusted bulletin boards. They seem to see the whole online world as a forum. Many even call “mycolts” a “board”. And they seem to have little patience for the learning curve required to become emotionally vested into the new site. These loyal fans see the writing on the wall…they know we’re about to close the old forum and move over to the new one, and they are beginning to plead with the team “please don’t shut down our forum”.

We don’t plan to shut it down, but we do plan to centralize the forum over onto mycolts. That said, I will admit that I’m pausing to consider the consequences of such move. If some fans want everything to stay just as it is, should we listen to them? Or should we move forward to do things which we think will make most fans happy? I wonder if this is how Sergio Zyman felt?