Your Comments and Opinions of the New Media

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter...Second Life, YouTube and Google. All great examples of the New Media.  We are a tiny part of the new media movement, blogging away in this little technical diving corner of the Internet.  It is fair to say that media is evolving on a daily basis.  Many newspapers and magazines are on life support. But what comes next?  Will all media delivery be online?  What about niche interests-like diving.  Will the dozens of print magazines that cover diving survive?  Will they need to adapt?  What about the Forums?  Deco Stop is for sale and ADM just bought Rebreather World.  Are the forums also dinosaurs of the 20th century...soon to be replaced by Facebook and Twitter?  These are interesting times, aren't they?  We'd like to know what is on your mind regarding this blog.  Why do you come to RebreatherPro.com?  What do you like or dislike?  What would you like us to change? Keep the same?  What topics interest you? How can we improve this project in coming years?  All feedback is appreciated.  Just click the tiny "comments" link below and let's have a conversation.  Jill Heinerth and Robert McClellan

Comments

[Jill]

Tim: THX for the thoughtful comments, we think you are right on. It is a delicate balance...Rob and Jill

[Tim]

Personally, Magazine value comes in its explosive photography... Sometimes you need\want something in your hands. (ADM, Wetpixel, CDS, NACD) WDM had too much narrative for my tastes...

Forums are relevant for discussion, unfortunately many are becoming overburdened with advertising\sales pitches and lacking experienced content, and giving the voice of experience to the unexperienced\ignorant masses. Sometimes its just downright scary on some ideas being propagated.

I look to blogs for edited\moderated high value content\thoughts...

Facebook is nice for communicating\distribution, 'hey, you should chk this out' or keeping folks up to date as an information hub...

[Erik]

Very clean, I like it.

[Robert]

We did a little redesign this week. We moved all of our in-house ads to a link in the navigation bar "SHOP." We cleaned up a lot of clutter and hope the site is easier to read an navigate. The ads in the side bars are financial sponsors and we could not provide this service to the rebreather community without their support. We appreciate your support!

[Jill and Robert]

Straightforward and candid is what we want--please don't apologize. We agree that the page is getting cluttered with ads, but we have some design changes coming that will reduce the advertising "noise." Thanks, Jill and Robert

[Erik]

I like the educational content (videos), the opinion pieces (one feature you like on a given rebreather) and travel stories.

I dislike
• the thinly veiled PR stories (the Nautilus Rebreather story is an example)
• too much monetization/ads on the page. More than 20 different ads
• 15% of the page is content, the rest is ads and links.

I understand the need to find opportunities to monetize your blogging effort but that's a bit much.

You have more experience diving rebreathers than 99.9% of the divers out there. Share it with us, focus on those articles, short videos. Even for people who haven't jumped yet. How often do you clean a rebreather, what's the routine, tell us about bailout, show us how to pack a scrubber. People will see how good of an instructor you are and they'll register for a class!

Sorry for being straighforward and candid, I think you have great content.