Dyestat shutting down?

prelific wrote:

hayward102 wrote:

... We'll see how that plays out, but I haven't seen one major meet (not covered by Dyestat, RunnerSpace, or FloTrack) where it was as easy to find information in one place as one that those sites covered.

can you reword this?

That was awkwardly worded. My point was that individual kids tweeting or posting video is pretty hard to aggregate in one location. In cases where a meet I was interested in was not covered by (Dyestate, Flotrack, Runnerspace etc.) it was always harder to find information than for meets they did cover. I don't know if the business model makes sense, but from a fan's point of view, I think those sites provide additional information above and beyond what I can get from individual athletes posting things online.

I was one of the original DyeStat posters and I'm sad to see it go. The T&F community owes an enormous debt of gratitude to John, Donna and the crew. There are a lot of other sites that have already filled the void, but I hope the DyeStat name gets to live on in some form. I will post a more formal and lengthy response once I learn the details of what going on.

Yes, but Mr. Dye retained the Dyestat brand. It's the equivalent of a recording artist keeping his masters and/or music publishing.

I'll be happy if watchout can find a home for his national rankings.

Mr. Dye is smart wrote:

Yes, but Mr. Dye retained the Dyestat brand. It's the equivalent of a recording artist keeping his masters and/or music publishing.

No he didn't.

It's Over. Done. Fini. wrote:

The simplicity of Social media technoloy has destroyed one hundred thousand websites like dyestat. High school runners tweet on their own, blog on blogspot, wordpress, and facebook. Coaches and parents network on linkedin. Many more running websites are going under this year.

Exactly... I was on dyestat all the time in high school and would love to see it brought back, but high school kids today would think old dyestat is totally antiquated.

That said what is the next way of harnessing national high school running content that current and future high schoolers will care about? Or what should ESPN have done to build up dyestat in web 2.0? I guess that's the question isnt it

Looks like Flotrack and MileSplit are teaming up to fill the void...

http://www.flotrack.org/article/12900-FLOCASTS-SIGNS-STRATEGIC-PARTNERSHIP-WITH-MILESPLIT-NETWORK

I learned a lot about Massachusetts and New England high school track from dyestat - back when I was in high school it was still independent of ESPN. There's really no equivalent for college. Letsrun doesn't really talk too much college track below the very elite, top tier guys. I think dyestat was great in that respect.

However, there were too many sarcastic pieces of work who liked to fuel drama.

Can someone tell me why the current ESPN version of Dyestat isn't as good as the old version?

I don't get what the differnce is in terms of editorial coverage.

I've always wondered if LetsRun should have a high school site but we are focused on elite running and haven't had the time/interest to try to cover it properly. I mean I don't know where I"d begin to figure out what amongst the 50 states was elite. I know how to do it for the pros but I know who the top pros are. With HS, there is some random new kid popping up every week.

Besides the forums (which is about a community), did people love dyestat for it's coverage, for it's results, for it's enthusiasm?

rojo wrote:

Can someone tell me why the current ESPN version of Dyestat isn't as good as the old version?

I don't get what the differnce is in terms of editorial coverage.

I've always wondered if LetsRun should have a high school site but we are focused on elite running and haven't had the time/interest to try to cover it properly. I mean I don't know where I"d begin to figure out what amongst the 50 states was elite. I know how to do it for the pros but I know who the top pros are. With HS, there is some random new kid popping up every week.

Besides the forums (which is about a community), did people love dyestat for it's coverage, for it's results, for it's enthusiasm?

i think 99% of the problem people have with it was the forums. when they shut down the original talk.dyestat.com, the fan base completely revolted and just hated everything ESPNRISE. there have been a few ridiculous things published on the site that were products of the ESPNRISE Magazine staff, but the coverage produced by the original Dyestat staff, as far as i can tell, remained basically the same.

one thing i will say is that having to make the homepage with the espnrise template did not work well for conveying a lot of information, when there's always so much going on

also it has lost a lot of the local emphasis and instead focuses on a few "mega-meets" they hype up and cover. i think some of this went along with the loss of the forum community, because there was no longer any type of grass-rootsy coverage.

Yeah, I'd pretty much agree.

The major issue people had originally, that seemed to never be forgiven, was the switch from a "good forum" on the old Dyestat to the "new forum" on the first attempt with ESPN (which lasted until March last year). Even when the forum structure was "improved" back to a very similar format like what it used to be, people never forgave the transgression and were content to instead stay with the community they made at tracktalk.net.

The other issues, I think, was the gradual progression from a significant regional AND focus in the stories and features to more of a nationally elite focus. The new site had even more results than ever before, but it didn't have as specific regional content outside of California and Illinois. I think a large part of that was because of the transition that was already underway: the height of Dyestat's coverage was when NTN was first starting up and there were regional editors providing a weekly synopsis of everything that the best teams in each region did -- not just listing results, but a summary for each ranked team. When the regional editors played less and less of a role (which happened well before ESPN bought Student Sports), that localization went away and was never completely replaced. DyeStat started coming up with more regional sites -- originally there was only DyeStatCal, but after the regional editor era there were three other regional sites that replaced them to an extent: DyeStatIL, DyeStatNW, and DyeStat Metro (the NY/NJ/CT area). Other states/regions never got back that kind of coverage, and DyeStatNW and Metro didn't last much beyond the transistion to RISE.

The other issue was that, as cd16 said, the front page didn't offer as much information at a moments glance. A front page with just links and a rotating image with a title on it is not the same thing as a couple sentences or a summary paragraph on the main page along with the link to the main story or meet report. That probably makes it seem like there is less editorial coverage -- simply linking to stories and results instead of summarizing along with links to complete stories/meet coverage doesn't give the same impression.

Those are the three things I've noticed at least... the editorial coverage isn't that different: almost the same group of people covering almost the same group of meets around the nation. The only areas that have really suffered in editorial content from the switch is the Northwest states (particularly Oregon and Washington) and NY Metro, because of the loss of the regional sites/local focus for those areas.

What you are describing was needed 20 years ago. Today my runners provide their little fans with their own personal content via tweets and facebook. ESPN killed the old Dyestat since it had no views.

Looks like Flotrack and MileSplit are teaming up to fill the void...

US, ESPN,... have vacated web servers and content creation for twitter, Facebook, google+, etc. The focus now is taking your content and feeding individual contributors in fb, g+, smugmug, twitter, etc. The days when US reguigitated press releases and meet results are dead. The key now is to let others provide that labor on their own social media accounts and include US content.

Here is California, even though DyestatCal survived the move to Rise and ESPN, then content was later and sparser.

My concern is with the news site. The forums are dead due to a combination of the rise of other social media, a silly reaction to the change in formats, and nobody wanting to be "that guy who posts" once things fell off.

There seemed to be three basic issues with the news site. 1) It took ESPN a long time to add basic features that had been in the old site. 2) Doug Speck, who was one half of the team behind the various sites that led up to DyestatCal, died several years ago. 3) This put all of the site onto Rich Gonzalez, who at the same time he lost Doug, added responsibilities with the national site.

This has been a real problem. We get very little coverage of our sports in the newspapers, especially in SoCal, and social media can't make up for news, analysis and results posting.

I don't know what's going to happen next - in it's current ESPN version, DyestatCal couldn't get much worse. Today on the California Forum, Rich Gonzalez posted this...

"It was announced yesterday that ESPN will be ceasing its HS operations later this year, which impacts several individuals in several sports. Obviously, my concern is with them at this point and time and as time moves forward.

Also, some have also speculated as to what this might mean for DyeStatCal or my endeavors in covering the sport within this great state down the road.

Please rest assured that coverage will not only continue as we head to a new school year, but likely will be clicking on all cylinders in new ways. These are very exciting times.

Thank you so much to all the coaches, the fans and especially the athletes who have shown great support in recent years and over the last year.

It's been especially heartwarming in recent months to continually read and hear the encouraging words via the contacts and emails that people have been sending. It has been reminiscent of the "old days" and has given me great confidence in knowing that the support is still there and it is very strong."

Through sport,

Rich Gonzalez

So we'll see. Rich's "promise to delivery" ratio hasn't been very good in recent years, but I'm sure a lot of this is due to the loss of Doug and ESPN's problems more than Rich. I hope so. I hope Rich can deliver - our sports are highly dependent on Dyestat.

Guys milesplit has really done a great job! In our state it is the absolute source for high school track and xc. Rojo just go to there stats icon on the site and that will give you what elite is in hs

Bantazmo milesplit wrote:

Guys milesplit has really done a great job! In our state it is the absolute source for high school track and xc. Rojo just go to there stats icon on the site and that will give you what elite is in hs

Oh shut up. Milesplit is a f-ing mess.

Why is it a mess?

Track Meet sites and social media has obsoleted 1,000,000s of websites CMSs out there. Flotrack and runnerspace are next to go kaput like dyestat, trackshark, marathonguide, etc. already have. It's all tweets and facebookings now directly from athletes even at the high school level. Plus smugmug HD2 videos, flickr 25MB super high resolution images. The Hollywood celebrity papparazzi have shown the way the of the future by posting gigs of FREE videos and snap shots.

rojo wrote:

Can someone tell me why the current ESPN version of Dyestat isn't as good as the old version?

I don't get what the differnce is in terms of editorial coverage.

I've always wondered if LetsRun should have a high school site but we are focused on elite running and haven't had the time/interest to try to cover it properly. I mean I don't know where I"d begin to figure out what amongst the 50 states was elite. I know how to do it for the pros but I know who the top pros are. With HS, there is some random new kid popping up every week.

Besides the forums (which is about a community), did people love dyestat for it's coverage, for it's results, for it's enthusiasm?

re: "did people love dyestat for it's coverage, for it's results, for it's enthusiasm?" Yes, and all of the above.

I guess the biggest thing DyeStat had was brand loyalty and whatever it didn't have was ok, because before that, there was nothing. In the beginning, it was the best thing since slice bread and people simply became comfortable with it. When people started to ask for more, you could tell it was starting to buckle under its own weight.

You never got the sense that the people behind the scenes had any other purpose for the site besides track & field. While that may not have been entirely true, but the owner and the mods were as much involved in the track & field community as the people who visited the site. By today's standards, the site wasn't anything fancy, in fact, the fancier it got, the more cumbersome it became. The initial site started out covering AAU/USATF youth track & field, which even today is pretty much ignored by all of the sites. W/o a doubt, H.S. was king on DyeStat, but there was quite a bit of NCAA, pro coverage and discussion as well. DyeStat also had a way of feeling national and local at the same time. Btw, I am big Letsrun user; however, a big advantage DyeStat had over Letsrun was that a lot more people posted under their real names or in many cases you knew who they were. It had very few political, racists, sexist, homophobes and nuts who claim every pro athlete is doping and/or their career is over with after a bad race or two.

I am sad to see DyeStat go, but to me, it shut down years ago; ESPN RISE was actually a pretty cool site, but it never caught on with me and obviously others as well. I have to admit that most of what DyeStat was doing has been taken over by other sites and perhaps it had simply run its course. - You never want to outlive you usefulness.