 Poster: A snowHead
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http://www.j2ski.com
From the stuff on the home page, this claim seems to be based on 'Hitwise' data, but I'm not very familiar with that (the Audit Bureau of Circulations - ABC - has been the traditional auditor for magazine/nespaper circulation data in the UK, and they have an electronic division). Is Hitwise a member-controlled auditing body?
j2ski don't seem to quote the data to verify their claim, which is intriguing, so it would be interesting to know more. The site has quite a 'shop window' look to it - a bit like an estate agent's window, with all the chalet prices etc. - which I personally find off-putting. On the other hand, people thinking of skiing are looking for quick info and an easy purchase, so it may make sense.
Can anyone throw any light on the "fastest growing UK ski site" claim?
Incidentally, I note one or two familiar 'names' on the j2ski forum, and there seems to be some traffic there. Statistical snow reports are a prominent feature of the site. It's always interesting to know where snow reports are sourced, though. I couldn't see any obvious indication of this, on the page I looked at.
The overall impression (since this has turned into a bit of a review) is a lively site, into which quite a bit of work has clearly been put. "J2" sounds a bit like a bathroom-cleaning product, though, and would not seem to have any obvious link to "ski".
Any alternative impressions?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I do a good Frankie Howerd!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I do my best to appear as an upstanding member of society 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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David Goldsmith, j2dave is a snowHead, why don't you ask him?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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j2dave Yoda's asked me to personally ask you what I thought I might get some impartial opinions about!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Last edited by You'll need to Register first of course. on Fri 5-12-08 12:57; edited 3 times in total
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j2ski started at the same time as snowheads as a replacement for the SCGB forum but didn't get traction at the time. It then took a more commercial outlook compared to Snowheads. It gets a lot more traffic than snowheads, whether it is faster growing depends on what base you are looking at but I would say the claim is probably justified.
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Is J2 any relation to K2?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Mayrhofen? No, I just can't get those letters to rearrange to La Rosiere no matter how I try 
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Can anyone throw any light on the "fastest growing UK ski site" claim?
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don't see any request for impartiality there?
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David Goldsmith, For a rough idea (and some say it is quite rough) try looking the site up on www.alexa.com or www.trafficestimate.com
J2Ski is certainly up there in terms of traffic but I'm guessing that's because it is a very good piece of SEO work and people find it easily when they search for ski related stuff. Whether it is very sticky is another matter. I would imagine this very snowHeads organ is equally growing fast and folks linger for ages and turn more pages in comparison to sites like J2Ski. "Fastest growing" makes them sound small IMO - they'd be better concentrating on where they sit in the overall scheme of things right now.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| davidof wrote: |
| It gets a lot more traffic than snowheads |
Although a bloke in a pub, who was on the phone to me at the time, recently told me that snowHeads was getting more traffic than Oxford Circus. It's hard to know where to turn these days (even off a mountain).
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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David Goldsmith, tell you what you would love to hear... snowHeads traffic outranks SCGB these days! Some bloke down at the chippy told me.
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Obviously my view about the Ski Club site is that it's there to service its members' best interests. Having the most traffic may not be the most important thing for the SCGB. It would obviously be very interesting to see the traffic data immediately before the first week of Feb 2004, and compare it with the traffic immediately after that week (for younger viewers, that was the week that was)
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You know it makes sense.
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David Goldsmith, but shirley "the self-elected spokesbody and leader of the poor disenfranchised British skier" (or whatever the phrase was) should get the most traffic.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Good point. I suppose it's the balance between commercial traffic and non-commercial traffic that can be interesting. The pre-Feb-2004 traffic of the SCGB site was essentially non-commercial. Its current traffic is, one would assume, essentially non-commercial. The huge traffic on the BBC site is non-commercial.
That's not an argument against commercialism, per se, and j2ski seems to be a full-out commercial site, but the SCGB remains (I hope) a member-controlled and member-motivated body. And, yes, I'm all in favour of a big boost in its popularity and populism.
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Poster: A snowHead
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David Goldsmith, I often use the forum as it can offer an often different perspective from Snowheads. It is a smaller forum than this one but both have their charms.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| That's not an argument against commercialism, per se, and j2ski seems to be a full-out commercial site, but the SCGB remains (I hope) a member-controlled and member-motivated body.. |
but with the most rubbish web-forum ever invented. I don't ever bother posting on there even to provide factual information as it is that annoying, like a relic of the 90s.
Plus why are you forced to use your real name to post?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks, The_Hirsty. j2ski is, of course, not the first predominantly commercial site to try a forum. ifyouski.com ran one for many years, and it was unusual in that no identified registration was required (in fact my memory is that no registration at all was required). A different posting name could be used for every post, or not, as required.
The j2ki formula appears to be most closely modelled on the ifyouski approach (which originally appeared in the 1990s as completeskier.com).
Moderation methods, and solving moderation problems, often seem to be the make or break of these forums.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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The Mod on J2ski does a good job as far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen any biased due to advertisments.
Also it should be born in mind that (as far as I can tell) it is run by one person who uses adverts to cover costs.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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David - to answer your original question.
As you note, the "fastest growing" point is backed by Hitwise data. At the risk of boring everyone stupid... Hitwise (who are owned by Experian I think) have their monitoring software installed with most (all?) of the major ISPs in the UK, and they measure traffic flowing through the ISP's routers and servers - to and from the various web sites. So for comparative purposes their data is probably about as solid as you can get. They monitor around 300 web sites in their Snow Sports category, including all your favourites.
Hitwise data shows our market share (of the "Snow Sports" category, measured by visits), growing from under 1% in Feb 2006 to between 5% and 10% (depending on season) in recent months. All of the other sites in the current Top 5 have had stable or declining market share in that time.
If you'd like any more info, feel free to PM me here (I've been a snowhead a looooooong time) or drop in. 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Greetings, Dave, and thanks for that info. I made the huge mistake of asking too many questions, instead of one at a time!
I may be wrong, but I think the merging of journalism and discussion is the key to this whole game. No one's really begun to crack it, to date. Interestingly, though, Michael Liebreich - who founded completeskier.com/ifyouski.com made many moves in that direction in the mid 1990s, founding his website off the back of a best-selling book:
https://alumni.mckinsey.com/alumni/default/public/content/jsp/alumni_news/News691.jsp
I always found he wrote remarkably good articles for the site (I assume it was him) and the forum had a very free spirit in its time. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve.
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Quality over Quantity. Softly Softly Catchy Monkey. Once a flower dies, a new one returns to take it's place. Evolution. We've seen it happen, it can happen again.
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What did you evolve from?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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P.S. Sorry, that was extremely rude. What do you expect to evolve into?
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Am I the only one who thinks this has all gone a bit "rah rah rah" ?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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they dont seem to have any posts with lists on in J2ski .......................
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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One of the benefits of j2ski is that ise posts there. Sensible chap so much in the mountains. Pity he no longer posts here.
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achilles, I think he does - occasionally.
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You know it makes sense.
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Smokin Joe, So he does (just done a forum search). Be nice if were here more frequently.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I see that J2ski now claims to be "second most popular UK ski website", again based on Hitwise data:
Their report on this
This has rankings for the top ten UK ski sites, as follows:
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1 Snow Forecast
2 J2Ski
3 Crystal Ski
4 Ski Club
5 Igluski
6 Ifyouski
7 Cairngorm Mountain
8 Snowheads
9 Natives
10 Winter Highland |
j2ski still looks remarkably commercial and non-editorial, but I guess their 'shop window' is working for them.
Any other rankings (which presumably might be based on alternative data) - e.g. from the sites Swiller mentions above - would be of interest.
Anyone got anything?
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Poster: A snowHead
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David Goldsmith, Interesting that ony 1 of those top 10 is advertising free.................
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Not sure what you mean. Advertising free what? Lunches?
The rankings are amazing, if accurate. Winterhighland is way more informative than Cairngorm, though it's obviously good to see the UK's Matterhorn (slightly rounded, admittedly) attracting that level of interest.
Snow-forecast.com (not to be confused with Snowforecast.com) have clearly cracked it, though it's never really been clear what use most people actually make of their forecasts!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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David Goldsmith, what I actually do find interesting, and heartening, about those figures is that Cairngorm is so high and Winterhighland is in there at number 10.
I find it a bit unfortunate that the Ski Club site beats them all, including Snowheads, though!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
Not sure what you mean. Advertising free what? Lunches?
The rankings are amazing, if accurate. Winterhighland is way more informative than Cairngorm, though it's obviously good to see the UK's Matterhorn (slightly rounded, admittedly) attracting that level of interest.
Snow-forecast.com (not to be confused with Snowforecast.com) have clearly cracked it, though it's never really been clear what use most people actually make of their forecasts! |
I wouldn't be surprised if the snow forecatss are the thing most looked at on the j2ski site as well.
The "use" people make of the forecasts is to find as many different ones as possible, then (depending on whether they are pessimists or optimists) assume taht either the worst one will happen, or the best one will happen 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Snow+Rock, if included, would come somewhere between 3rd and 4th. Ellis Brigham, Inghams and Neilson would also make the list as far as I can tell. Statistics eh?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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If that's the case, why would those companies want to be excluded? [assuming they've elected not to be listed/audited]
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I presume snow forecast has lots of widgets on other peoples sites, so any traffic to them will also registar as traffic to snowforecast
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| If that's the case, why would those companies want to be excluded? [assuming they've elected not to be listed/audited] |
I don't think anyone choses to be included or excluded. I guess S+R count as an online retailer rather than a ski website. All these things are questionable... I think SCGB and Snowheads are fairly neck'n'neck. Certainly Snowheads was ahead during the autumn but I guess, as people start looking for snow reports, SCGB's numbers start to overtake. But what's important in all this? A quick visit to a site for a snow report is very different from someone spending ages reading, say, opinions on a resort on here. Someone buying a ski outfit on Snowandrock.com might be on for 20 minutes, whereas someone finding J2Ski as a result of a Google search might click straight off.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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yeah I guess S&R will be in retail, and inghams in more generic travel etc.. Obviously hit counts only tells part of the story and you really need to look at the clickstrem behaviour pre ad post click to get a fuller understanding.
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I wonder how the advertisers on snowHeads measure the response to their advertising 
If I wasn't insured already with DogTag I think I would be seriously considering them.
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FAQ
