May 19, 2010 21:23
Chuck doesn't make a proper introduction of himself so I'll do it for him - he's the current General Manager of Waterway Guide.
While I can understand why Chuck might take exception with my announcement, his debate is full of holes and incorrect assumptions.
Let me say upfront that with ActiveCaptain, the boater is our customer. They are king to everything we do. We cater to their needs, desires, and strive to make our product to best for them. The question to ask Chuck is, who is Waterway Guide's customer? We'll get to that later. For now, let's dissect what Chuck wrote.
http://www.waterwayguide.com/publications.php
That page is supposed to list every update for every one of the 6 books that Waterway Guide produces. I'll save you from jumping to that page. There are zero corrections listed. Do you honestly mean to tell me that every piece of information in all 6 books is completely correct from the time it was published?
ActiveCaptain averages over 1,000 updates to it's data every day. On Tuesday we received 1,800 updates. Today we received 2,800 updates. Our totals are higher than normal right now because of the new iPhone/iPad announcement and activity is generally up. How could it be that we receive so many additional pieces of information and there are absolutely no updates for your 6 books in the months since they were printed?
St Augustine Municipal Marina is a good example:
http://activecaptain.com/X.php?lat=29.89...5&t=n&z=16
They currently have 21 reviews. Some are from a week or two ago; a couple are from 2007. The body of reviews shows an exceptional facility over 3 years with the only consistent issue being a warning about current when entering the marina. I think having those older reviews there is an excellent feature of ActiveCaptain and I'm glad it's there.
Going further, please Chuck, show me one negative thing written about a marina in any Waterway Guide. Just one. Give me the sentence. It's hard to find because Waterway Guide is about advertising - and I'll get more into that below.
What started Karen and me down the path to create ActiveCaptain was our total frustration with phone numbers being wrong in a Waterway Guide. Phone numbers!
Now through all of this argument, I'm not saying that all of our data is 100% perfect. I know it's not. But I also know that any piece of information can be updated, edited, or amended within 2 minutes. No update pages, emails, or manual insertion required - if you ever really do that anyway.
You see, Waterway Guide sells very expensive advertisements to marinas and other organizations. The prices of these ads is upwards of $20,000 per page. What truly disgusts me as a boater is that the guides are distributed as a reference book when in reality, they are asking the boater to pay for a book of ads. And yet do these guides adhere to journalistic practices separating editorial content from advertising content? We all know the answer to that. They don't. Put a big ad in a Waterway Guide and you're guaranteed to be highlighted in table of the few marinas mentioned for an area and there will surely be no negative words written. Marinas understand this game and the ones we're talking to are sick of it too.
This similar thing happens with many of the boating magazines we all read. But in almost all cases, those magazines are free. I like reading them - I admit it - but I certainly don't expect to get a real positives-vs-negatives review of the new boats reviewed. I know that the magazines are advertising vehicles but the free cost makes it all seem OK to me. Contrast with the $40 charged by Waterway Guide given as "The Cruising Authority". It's a terrible, flawed practice that presents biased information. To make it even worse, they make it seem like it's an impartial tool for the boater. It sickens me and it's a major reason why we felt something like ActiveCaptain was needed.
The honest truth Chuck is that boaters are starting to realize all of this. They're tired of not finding that out-of-the-way marina that can't afford your advertisements. They want to find the facilities that provide good service and they want honest information. And the marinas are tired of feeling like they're held hostage by your large fees without any real proof that the ads work.
The title for my announcement wasn't something that I wrote. It was something that was written to me by another boater. The sad truth for Waterway Guide is that a lot of boaters are realizing that there just isn't a reason to buy another guidebook. You're living in a house of cards with a big wind on the horizon.
While I can understand why Chuck might take exception with my announcement, his debate is full of holes and incorrect assumptions.
Let me say upfront that with ActiveCaptain, the boater is our customer. They are king to everything we do. We cater to their needs, desires, and strive to make our product to best for them. The question to ask Chuck is, who is Waterway Guide's customer? We'll get to that later. For now, let's dissect what Chuck wrote.
CapnChuck Wrote:As a publisher we understand the limitations of print, however most guide book publishers have means to access updated information through their websites and email updates to subscribers.Let's go to the update page on Waterway Guide's web site:
http://www.waterwayguide.com/publications.php
That page is supposed to list every update for every one of the 6 books that Waterway Guide produces. I'll save you from jumping to that page. There are zero corrections listed. Do you honestly mean to tell me that every piece of information in all 6 books is completely correct from the time it was published?
ActiveCaptain averages over 1,000 updates to it's data every day. On Tuesday we received 1,800 updates. Today we received 2,800 updates. Our totals are higher than normal right now because of the new iPhone/iPad announcement and activity is generally up. How could it be that we receive so many additional pieces of information and there are absolutely no updates for your 6 books in the months since they were printed?
CapnChuck Wrote:In addition one only has to go through many of the posted information tabs on Active Captain and find that the "reviews" and posted information is dated to 2008 and 2009 or older.Thank goodness we show the older reviews. That often shows a trend and changes happening at a facility. As management changes, the reviews will often change. Amazon does the same thing and it's a pretty good model for reviewing a product or service.
St Augustine Municipal Marina is a good example:
http://activecaptain.com/X.php?lat=29.89...5&t=n&z=16
They currently have 21 reviews. Some are from a week or two ago; a couple are from 2007. The body of reviews shows an exceptional facility over 3 years with the only consistent issue being a warning about current when entering the marina. I think having those older reviews there is an excellent feature of ActiveCaptain and I'm glad it's there.
CapnChuck Wrote:These "reviews" are in fact a matter of personal opinion posted by an individual and we all know one persons opinion is not necessarily the same as another.Yes, the reviews are personal opinions from a variety of different people. Some local people who know an area well and some from people who are visiting. Are you saying that the method that Waterway Guide uses where an editor writes information about a facility is better? Isn't their writing just one person's opinion? Isn't it better having the differing viewpoints? We have plenty of marinas with both 1 and 5 star reviews. Those are so incredibly important because different type of boats, boaters, needs, etc have different experiences.
Going further, please Chuck, show me one negative thing written about a marina in any Waterway Guide. Just one. Give me the sentence. It's hard to find because Waterway Guide is about advertising - and I'll get more into that below.
CapnChuck Wrote:There is actually no way to tell what date much of the information is derived from. So your product in fact contains a great deal of information that is much more out of date than that which you seem to dwell on from printed guides.This is confusing to me. Apart from our dated review section for each marina and anchorage, we have a details section. The details section contains factual information verified by us. Whether a marina has showers isn't really something up for debate. They either do or they don't and it sort of ends there. Now whether they're clean or not, well that's not something that will ever show up in a Waterway Guide. And yet, that's the type of information boaters want - and our reviews tell them that.
What started Karen and me down the path to create ActiveCaptain was our total frustration with phone numbers being wrong in a Waterway Guide. Phone numbers!
Now through all of this argument, I'm not saying that all of our data is 100% perfect. I know it's not. But I also know that any piece of information can be updated, edited, or amended within 2 minutes. No update pages, emails, or manual insertion required - if you ever really do that anyway.
CapnChuck Wrote:We understand you have a product to promote, and you do it well....[other text about how having multiple pieces of information is good and how much experience Chuck has personally clipped]I stand behind by statement that there is no reason to buy another guidebook, especially one like Waterway Guide. Let's get back to "who's the customer"...
You see, Waterway Guide sells very expensive advertisements to marinas and other organizations. The prices of these ads is upwards of $20,000 per page. What truly disgusts me as a boater is that the guides are distributed as a reference book when in reality, they are asking the boater to pay for a book of ads. And yet do these guides adhere to journalistic practices separating editorial content from advertising content? We all know the answer to that. They don't. Put a big ad in a Waterway Guide and you're guaranteed to be highlighted in table of the few marinas mentioned for an area and there will surely be no negative words written. Marinas understand this game and the ones we're talking to are sick of it too.
This similar thing happens with many of the boating magazines we all read. But in almost all cases, those magazines are free. I like reading them - I admit it - but I certainly don't expect to get a real positives-vs-negatives review of the new boats reviewed. I know that the magazines are advertising vehicles but the free cost makes it all seem OK to me. Contrast with the $40 charged by Waterway Guide given as "The Cruising Authority". It's a terrible, flawed practice that presents biased information. To make it even worse, they make it seem like it's an impartial tool for the boater. It sickens me and it's a major reason why we felt something like ActiveCaptain was needed.
The honest truth Chuck is that boaters are starting to realize all of this. They're tired of not finding that out-of-the-way marina that can't afford your advertisements. They want to find the facilities that provide good service and they want honest information. And the marinas are tired of feeling like they're held hostage by your large fees without any real proof that the ads work.
The title for my announcement wasn't something that I wrote. It was something that was written to me by another boater. The sad truth for Waterway Guide is that a lot of boaters are realizing that there just isn't a reason to buy another guidebook. You're living in a house of cards with a big wind on the horizon.