GolfInvestors Blog: February 2007

US PGA Tour <> Fantasy Golf?

I can remember in 1999 when I was talking with the US PGA Tour about GolfInvestors and the possibility of them using Gi as a fantasy golf game on their side. I had faxed Tim Finchem right after David Duval had won the PLAYERS Championship and congratulated him on both Duvals winning that weekend, as Bob Duval (David's father) had also won on the Champions Tour that weekend. I then proceeded in contacting Finchem's office further to talk to them about the GolfInvestors concept, as it was just a concept at that time.

When I contacted Finchem's office, they said that I should talk with the "media" executive within the US PGA Tour organization about web partnerships and applications. I wanted to see if the GolfInvestors simulation stock markets would be of interest as a fantasy golf game for the US PGA Tour.

During the phone calls I was told vividly that there was a legal issue with them running fantasy golf games. The executive I was talking to said that golfers were independent contractors and that they, the US PGA Tour, could not use the golfers' names as there was a legal issue. Then basically they said that we had to watch out for the same issue.

So the end result from that interaction, was that they said we should not pursue working with the US PGA Tour as they did not think fantasy golf games would be something that the US PGA Tour would be interested in.

In that conversation, I found out that the executive that I talked to was more worried about keeping his job then he was in working with getting good suppliers and partnerships put together. This sort of attitude seems common place in golf organizations --- the attitude of trying to keep one's job rather than doing well for the organization. I saw this a lot when I was working with the Nicklaus organization. In my experiences at the Nicklaus organization, the person that played the political game the best won the battle between employees. The same thing happened with interactions with the Golf Course Superintendent of America Association (GCSAA).

Such an attitude does not bode well for the overall success of the organization, as employees are looking out for themselves first rather than looking out for the bets interest of the organization that they are working for.

Going back to the US PGA Tour encounter in 1999, since then the US PGA Tour has gone ahead and established their own fantasy golf games and prominently promote them. For example, when I was looking at the home page of the pgatour.com today after the finish of the Accenture World Match Play Championship, they actually us up two main areas to tell users about their fantasy golf games.

Take a look at the screen shot below of the pgatour.com home page from today, Sunday, 2007-02-25, at 6pm MST.

Is the US PGA Tour becoming a Fantasy Golf organization and not a tournament golf organization? Does US PGA Tour = Fantasy Golf? For the sake of the members of the US PGA Tour, the professional golfers, I sure hope not. I hope that US PGA Tour <> Fantasy Golf.

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Some people might read this blog posting and think that I am upset that the US PGA Tour did not use Gi as a fantasy golf game partner. Yes, it is was disappointing when the US PGA Tour pushed us away. However, that was not the biggest disappointment. The biggest disappointment was to find out how the US PGA Tour treats small people / companies and that they do not work with them upfront --- which is basically how many big businesses operate today. They say one thing many times, and do another. They do not work with people upfront, but behind one's back, to ensure that their employees, not necessarily ALL of their members, benefit.

Come to think of it, I do not know of any small company that has benefited from working with the US PGA Tour in the LONG RUN. If I am wrong in this conclusion, please correct me and show me cases where small companies have benefited in the long run when working with the US PGA Tour. Thanks.

[ Updated 2007-08-14: Today I saw that Protrade had one of their users publish an article on pgatour.com. See below the link from the home page (Who's Who at Wyndham) and the article that was published. Interesting that the US PGA Tour is working with ProTrade. Guess since ProTrade has already bought licenses to work with the MLB and the NBA, that the US PGA Tour feels comfortable working with Protrade. Good for Protrade. ]

Link to the Protrade article on pgatour.com

Link to the home page of pgatour.com

Link to the home page of protrade.com

Traffic on Gi site dropped 33% when 2007 Season Market was paused

This past week we paused (turned off trading) on the 2007 Season Market for several days. Trading was paused from Wednesday evening (2007-02-22) until Saturday afternoon (2007-02-24) because of some irregular trading that happened on Wednesday.

In reviewing the Gi site's logs for this week, it is interesting to see that the site's traffic dropped dramatically when the market was paused. Site traffic on Thursday and Friday was about 2/3 the normal traffic amount.

This is good to see that active trading markets entice people to use the site. :-) That shouldn't be hard to figure out, but in any event it is nice to be able to support that with data like I see in this week's site logs.

Here is a summary of the site's activity this week.....

	# of Sessions	Page Views
Monday	921	4,351
Tuesday	1,159	6,049
Wednesday	1,080	4,594
Paused the 2007 Season Market on Wednesday afternoon
Thursday	881	2,954
Friday	734	2,246
Saturday	699	3,070
Opened the 2007 Season Market for trading on Saturday afternoon

BTW: We get around 20,000 to 40,000 sessions per day just from robots / spiders / crawlers. So if you are ever looking at advertising on web sites, make sure the site does not give you bogus activity numbers that include sessions / page views from these crawlers. For example, today, Saturday (2007-02-24) the Gi site saw 47,329 sessions contribute to the site log by crawlers. Each session had one page view each, so there were also 47,329 page views contributed to the site log by these crawlers.

US PGA Tour commercial contradicts itself

I like Chad Campbell. He is an old fashion Texan, even though he is young. He has values of what Texans used to be --- friendly and honest.

So I find it strange that Chad Campbell did a US PGA Tour "These guys are good" commercial. It seems to me that the commercial contradicts itself.

In the commercial Chad Campbell basically says that one should not promote one's self by saying:

"My parents taught me....if you have to tell the world how good you are, then you are probably not that good." -- Chad Campbell

I wholeheartedly believe in that philosophy. That is why I do hardly any marketing and advertising for GolfInvestors --- which, in some people's mind, is not a smart move.

As for the commercial, it is funded, produced, and presented by the US PGA Tour. Thus, it is a commercial promoting one's self. In this case the US PGA Tour is promoting itself -- telling the world how good they are.

Since the US PGA Tour has to tell people how good they are via the such commercials, does that mean they are really not as good as they say they are?

See the commercial for yourself....

Added Meebo to the Gi Blog

Today I added a Meebo widget component to the Gi Blog. Adding a Meebo component is in tune with what I wrote earlier today in a blog entry regarding adding Meebo to the "Live Help" aspect of Gi.

After writing that entry I felt it would be good to also add a Meebo component to the Gi Blog in case anyone wanted to converse with me while reading a blog entry. If not, I can understand. :-) Just thought I would add the feature in any case.

GolfInvestors Live Help

GolfInvestors has had a feature called "Live Help" for several years now. However, I never was really available online a lot to be able to help and talk to people online. As well, the technology that ran the Gi online help feature was a little cumbersome, so it deterred me from using it.

That has all changed as I have found a nice little program that is easy and convenient to use where ever I am. It is called Meebo.

I have hooked in a Meebo widget on Gi now and am using it often. You can see when "Live Help" is turned on by looking for the "Live Help" icon on ever page of Gi. See the screen shot below that points out the "Live Help" icon.

Click on the "Live Help" link and another browser window will open up with the Meebo widget in it. The Meebo widget will allow you to type in questions and get answers from live persons, including myself. :-)

Use it or risk losing it. i.e. if the feature is not used, don't expect it to stay around for long.....

Screencast on how to buy shares of an offering

Today's screencast flavor is: "How to buy shares of an offering". With several players doing offerings on the 2007 Season Market this week, and some of them available for purchase (Offering Status of "Selling off Market"), I felt it would be good to show users steps on how to buy shares of an offering on GolfInvestors. Click on the image below to start the screencast.

[ view screencast ]

Screencast on viewing Gi Stock Certificates

Today I did a screencast on how to view stock certificates of players in your portfolio on a GolfInvestors stock market. It is short and sweet. Click on the image below to start the screencast.

[ view screencast ]

Changed the format of the GolfInvestors Blog

Today I changed the format of the GolfInvestors Blog. The new format is a blue themed color and has some more design elements in it than the previous format of the blog. The previous format of the blog was a plain white themed design. Hope everyone likes the new design.

Sales, sales, sales --- how about just golf

This afternoon I was reading about John Deere (Moline, Illinois) buying Lesco (Cleveland, Ohio). I know Lesco from the days GolfSolutions.com was working on an online facility management system for golf course superintendents and when I was working with the Nicklaus organization in golf course construction in the late 1990s.

Since Deere is buying Lesco at $14 per share and Lesco is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, I took a look at Lesco's most recent 10-K. In doing a quick read of the the 10-K what really struck me was the following paragraph:

Employees As of December 31, 2005, we had 1,009 full-time employees, of which 14 were involved in warehouse operations, 783 in sales-related activities and 212 in management and administration. Of the total number of full-time employees, 572 were salaried and 437 were hourly employees.

That means that almost 80% of Lesco's employees are sales people....WOW!!! Sales, sales, sales --- but I like golf, not sales.

I am not a big sales person in terms of advertising and used-car selling. Rather, I am a business person salesman. In that, I mean I build relationships and via those relationships people come to trust me and thus buy from me. I don't push products or services on people. Maybe this is why GolfInvestors is taking awhile to migrate through the minds of others....

As for my sales strategy, it is a good strategy if you want to build a solid company based upon solid relationships with customers....and thus be able to sleep at night. However, it is not a good strategy when you have VC / institutional money as they want to earn money, not build relationships.

Screencast on how to use Leaderboards on GolfInvestors

Today I put together a quick screencast of how to use leaderboards on GolfInvestors. Click on the image below to start the screencast. The leaderboard I use as an example is today's final round of the Outback Pro-Am in Florida --- a Champions Tour event.

[ view screencast ]

Added a Grease Monkey script

Today I ran across the Grease Monkey add-on for Firefox --- wow, is it cool. Doing some research, I found some example scripts which put some ideas in my head about how to use it on Gi. For starters, tonight, using some example scripts, I modified them and created a basic Gi script that would show the player's stock ticker symbol and the current stock price. So if a user is reading an article with Phil Mickelson's name in it, the Gi Grease Monkey script will show the "G" icon for Gi, Mickelson's Gi ticker symbol (i.e. PHMIN) and his current stock price on the 2007 Season Market.

You have to use the Firefox browser to be able to use the Gi Grease Monkey script. If you are not already using Firefox as a browser, it is recommended you do. Get it here: http://getfirefox.com

Then download and install the Grease Monkey add-on for Firefox. http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

Then download and install the Gi Grease Monkey script. http://golfinvestors.com/external/gi_stocks_greasemonkey.user.js

Added Skype to the Site

Recently we added Skype to the GolfInvestors site. On the Contacts page, with this update, if I am online in Skype an image will show that I am online and you can click on it to talk to me either via Skype Phone or Skype Chat.

http://golfinvestors.com/about/contact_us.php

Added hCalendar microformat to Tournament schedule

On the Tournaments - Schedule page add a hCalendar microformat feature. This feature allows users to be able to copy tournaments into their own calendar software (i.e. Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.).

Below are screen shots of how the Tournaments - Schedule page looks and works in terms of using the hCalendar microformat feature. Note: I am using the Firefox Add-on called "Operator".