MX Weekend Window

Saturday, December 8, 2007

2008 - A Great Year for the Internet, Coming Up

OPINION:

Every year, the SXMX internet gets better. This summer Motocross.com and Racer X brought videos and new coverage of the nationals all summer and gave things a major upgrade. Supercross has been doing excellent live webcasts for years and those get better. The news sites are busier and better, and the SXMX media business is supporting more full-timers, all good trends.

The internet is going to be better than ever, and more important than ever in 2008. There is a lot of fast-moving news coming up in 2008 and people are ready to use the internet and respond to it.

The internet is reality on fast forward. If you know where to sit, it can be quite a ride sometimes. What is coming up very soon is a more mature internet meets a lot of really big changes and potentially very good things for the sport, so stay tuned.

When the AMA smartly decided to get out of the way of racing promoters and tell a new story, CEO Rob Dingman used the internet. He wrote up a new vision which turned out to be a good shortcut for us in media wondering what they are up to. They put so much out there, I honestly called back their VP of PR and backed off a request for an interview, because I noticed that what they posted already was better than I would have done in the first place. Cool.

Everyone who is not good at the internet now will be soon, and the attention is going to become more focused there. Sometimes we joke the internet is just a few thousand people arguing with each other, but none of us can stop it seems.

Coming up next is what happens when the AMA follows through on it's plans to step away from racing business. No matter what, change is coming. There is now competition to make things better, and the only real outcome is - if everyone tries that hard to make it better and more secure, it will be. This will unfold on the internet too, like everything these days.

A handful of us that do a lot of the web reporting were at the FIM Off Road Awards in Monaco last weekend, as guests of Youthstream, the promoter of the MX GPs and Supermoto GP. We did the FIM Awards, and brought a couple back which was a surprise. We also got to know the Youthstream president Guiseppe Luongo better, so when news unfolds next year over whatever happens in outdoor motocross, we know who we are talking about. Youthstream is bidding on the contract for the outdoor nationals soon.

The organization of tracks that make up the nationals now, the NPG, is spending it's time now preparing its proposal to the AMA to keep doing what it has been doing. One comment about understanding the news as this unfolds is that just as there have been two AMAs to understand lately - The old meddling one with AMA Pro - and the New Regime that gets out of the promoters way - there are two NPGs.

When there was AMA Pro, the NPG was what they were not, and things got done. They didn't take on the AMA as much as supercross. Things just always seemed to come down to the AMA's Duke Finch got this and that and the tracks did this and that and people worked things out, and the series ran. The good old days. In recent years, the NPG has been working on getting more organized and becoming more than just 12 tracks, and they have had to pace this with changes in AMA Pro in recent years, then with AMA Pro unraveling. Then really quickly, they need to become a new NPG, that walks and talks more like supercross - ready to take on the same responsibilities.

All this and more on the internet in 2008.

Whatever happens, best holiday wishes and looking forward a great year.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Most Unwelcome Spectator on the Internet!

"They hate you on three boards! You are crazy!" That came from my good friend Sondra, who watched me blow up Mototalk, and step into a wall of resistance at SX.com when I started the first day as a mod, whch freaked people out, and that was just a week after going back to IHateTFS.com (Motodrive ) to antagonize them about my weight melting off because all they ever seemed to come up with was fat insults, so it was payback time. All this went on, and that is just the ones you see.

That's life on the internet. How was your day?

I guess everyone should just remember if all the eggs are broken, someone better be planning a very good omelette. Sorry about the eggs, really.

Sorry about the skirmish with Bushwood this morning. If they want to turn it into "Come-back-and-hate-TFS," then it really makes itself "Motodrive-That-You-Pay-For."

Sunday, November 18, 2007

What's Wrong with Internet Message Boards?

OPINION:

Larry Brooks, owner/manager of L&M Racing, and Mototalk are giving each other the middle finger. TFS (me) has made his last post on Mototalk, ending ten years in one place on line (and a pretty fun time). The journalists are frauds and sellouts, the mood is crappy and the industry side is that the internet boards are too aggressive and bitchy and fans are out of control.

The fan's side is if you can't take the heat....and the internet belongs to the internet strong - so give us another team manager to flame out so they will hate the internet as much as everyone else.

There is something very wrong here, and I do think people will agree if they take off their internet personality long enough to think about it objectively. If a manager of a winning supercross team can't go to a leading web site and post some fluff about his rider winning without being harrassed off the board, something is very wrong. Everyone in this sport is a fan deep down and deserves at least a chance to experience the internet with dignity. When you get done laughing at that, think about it and you will agree.

I keep hearing it from people at the races more and more, "The internet is too bitchy. I wish I could participate, but you say anything and you get hammered.." The internet has been around long enough that everyone has seen it, tried it, and a lot of people got treated like Brooks did at Mototalk. It is a fact that people are internet shy and have an overall low opinion of it, or at least of the message boards I spent 10 years on. The internet has pretty much had its chance, and the end result isn't that good.

I have always said the end result you get is because of how you set it up in the beginning, so as someone who has been at this from the beginning, I look at the last paragragh and go "Oh crap! The internet sux and it's my fault!"

So, sorry for screwing up the internet. I accept full responsibility. I will do better next time, I promise.

The AMA just re-thought itself, as we can read off their site, and one thing that stands out was they looked at what made the AMA unpopular (racing does) and what about that needed to get changed (people moved, business sorted out).

Internet message boards need that too. They are popular with fans, but unpopular with industry and racers, and that's too bad. If one could fix that.....That's really not too much to ask or a crazy idea. People tell me every weekend that they would use the net boards more if they weren't taken over by bitching.

As I watched the boards evolve over the years, I keep in mind what Kawasaki's Bruce Stjernstrom used to say, which was leave those boards to the fans, let them have a place they control, they need it. That's true really. The best example of that is GuyB's Motodrive, a fan's place where you can be a jerk and it's not a big deal because you assume no one reads it anyway. :)

I guess I broke the internet a little by ignoring Bruce and letting Mototalk become a bit of a fan-vs-industry soap opera. It was remarkable sometimes, but I honestly think that part has run it's course with just about everyone having the Brooks experience by now. People got close to the internet, got snapped at, and pulled back, and won't try again without something changing.

One has to wonder is it possible to build a place where fans can be fans and riders or team people enjoy it a little too without getting pounced on?

Nah!