sangiro

Heya all,

Because everybody loves free stuff! As promised yesterday we're starting to give away some stuff on the Dropzone.com Facebook page. We've got 10 copies of Dan's book, Above All Else: A World Champion Skydiver's Story of Survival and What It Taught Him About Fear, Adversity, and Success and one of them could be yours for free. Here's what you have to do:

1. Like Our Facebook Page
2. Share any post, picture, status update, video or whatever we post to that page in any particular week with your friends and you're in the draw. Share 2 and you're in twice, share 3 and... well, you get the picture.
3. We'll be giving away 2 copies every Friday for the next 5 weeks, starting this Friday, September 7, 2012
4. If you don't win the first week, just share away the next and you'll automatically be entered into the draw again.
5. That's it. Good luck and have fun!

Winners will be announced on Facebook and here in the forums. The prize cannot be swapped for anything else. If you cannot be contacted or don't respond to our notifications that you've won within 48 hours, you'll make the next guy very happy!

Here's a link to our Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/dropzoneskydiving

Remember, you have to "Share" not just "Like" to enter the draw.

Heya all,

Heads up. We're going to start giving away stuff on the Dropzone.com Facebook page tomorrow. You'll have to join though so drop in and "like" our page, then keep checking Facebook and the Forums here and we'll let you know what's up for grabs. Woot!

http://www.facebook.com/dropzoneskydiving

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I'm seeing them; not supposed to as far as I know, as a dues-paying member... I posted something in the right forum, but i think folks are too busy to look there yet.

O HH -- are the ads here to stay?

Wendy - we'll remove the ads for Premium Paid members again soon. Just doing a migration from the NameMedia ad server to ours and there's a lot of configuration going on.

That being said, the Premium Members program will be reviewed as well. We do need to convince ourselves again that it still makes sense to offer that option. The premium membership has added a lot of complexity to the site code (to serve special features, filter stuff etc) and I need to be sure the numbers justify that extra complexity.

If we do decide to stick with it we need to figure out how to add more value to it to draw in more members. Open to suggestions.

Nope. Click on the My Stuff button in the top right corner. Email is not being used by enough people to justify it having it's own link in the primary navigation.

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Please disregard my last post. It's working ok now.

Good, let me know if you see that again. I have that same setup on a PC here and have not seen that before. If you do see it again, grab a screenshot or make a note of which ad it was.

Thanks!

Heya all,

We've launched the a new home page for Dropzone.com. Take a peek and give us feedback. Tell us if you find anything that';s not working. There's bound to be some quirks (I trust they'll be small) in the system and we'll get those sorted out over next week.

We'll move forward on upgrading the remaining sections on the site soon: Classifieds, Videos, Stolen Gear, Fatalities database, Webmail and the Forums.

Will keep you posted and have a most excellent weekend!

PS - How do you get your photo to feature on the home page? It's a little algorithm the checks for recent photos, with certain number of minimum votes and a baseline average rating. Upload your good stuff - we want to feature it!

Hey T,

That will be back in short order. if you look at the sections we've been updating you'll notice that the home page is kinda out of line at this stage. I'm working on that right now and it will be part of the next section to roll out. I the meantime we've changed how the pages are rendered to deliver a more personalized experience in the future and ironically that little legacy widget broke.

When the new template goes up over the next few days that will be back and better. In the meantime I hope the one additional page load doesn't annoy you too much.
(Hint: you can come straight to the forums if you want and the old login widget will still work here)

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I am betting you are glad to be a skydiver. Those rockclimbers are a bit harsh.

That's OK. I've been doing this for a while, so I understand how this works, how people and their personas react online and I'm long beyond the point where I allow individuals to get too much under my skin on a forum.
I think its up to us to do cool stuff with this site, and RC.com. That's really the best response.

PS - I'm climber as well.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! It certainly is exciting to be focusing on Dropzone.com again. As you'll pick up from the press release, I agree that that devices (phones, tablets etc) have moved on since we were last at the helm here and I agree that we will have to do something about making the site a lot more accessible on those.

Also, the underlying packages used to build these sites are outdated and stale. Chances are we have a pretty big re-platforming exercise somewhere in the near future to set up to make improvements faster and at a lower cost.

As for content - the forums are buzzing, but the editorial content not. It's up to us to change that. If you can or want to write you are more than welcome to PM me. I will however bring somebody on board in the office here who will spend a considerable amount of his/her time focusing on that again.

I'm feeling like a kid with a new (old?) toy and can go on and on about everything I'd like to do but right now I'm a little buried in the transition from NameMedia. The ad server, billing, tracking everything that happens in the background has to come over to our side - for all 3 sites - and that will probably keep my busy for the next week or so.

In the meantime as you may have noticed, we have been doing some template changes on the Dropzones, Gear and Photos section. There's more to come on that and I'll keep you posted.

Drop in on the Feedback and Suggestions and leave me your thoughts on what you'd like to see on the side, changed or added. We're unlikely to implement all of them but I can assure you we will shortly start going through that forum post by post to see what you've been talking about and where you'd like to see us improve.

Keep it coming.

Heya all,

It's been a while. Those of you who are older than Justin Bieber may remember me...

I have some exciting news to share today. We’ve entered into an agreement to buy back Dropzone.com, BASEjumper.com and Rockclimbing.com. See the official PR below. There are several factors that played in on this decision and that got us to this point. Bringing these sites back into the D4DR Media stable at this time provides us with the best opportunity to improve on what’s been created here over many years and ensure their longevity.

So what will happen next? Right now I don't have a long list of plans lined up to execute. We've been managing these sites as a partner and more recently as minority stakeholder since the day we initially sold them so while the ownership just changed, our involvement really doesn't. I think the moderators and Bryn are doing an excellent job at being available to you guys to help steer the ship in the forums and they will continue to do so.

On a personal note, I’m pretty thrilled about this. I'll be around a little more often again now and I'm looking forward to catching up.
Press Release:
------------------------------------------
D4DR Media Acquires Dropzone.com, BASEjumper.com and Rockclimbing.com to Refocus on Adventure Sport Communities

Somerset West (South Africa) August 20, 2012 - D4DR Media announced today that the company will acquire and operate three of the leading sites in the adventure sport category: Dropzone.com, BASEjumper.com and RockClimbing.com.

Willem Grobler, the CEO of D4DR Media, originally founded Dropzone.com in 1994. Dropzone.com merged with Rockclimbing.com in 2005 and in the year after these two sites started operating under the banner of D4DR Media. In 2007 BASEjumper.com was added to the portfolio of leading adventure sport sites .

"I have a personal history with Dropzone.com spanning almost two decades" Grobler was quoted as saying. "Bringing Dropzone.com, BASEjumper.com and Rockclimbing.com back to D4DR Media will give us the opportunity to refocus on the adventure sport niche and reconnect with some old and new friends."

D4DR Media will continue to build on the success of these sites by providing a platform for members to interact, share knowledge, experiences and ideas. Focus will be also be brought to efforts to help introduce new members to these sports by leveraging the reach of new and existing online channels.

"These are well-established communities and the company understands the strong underlying cultures and the industries that support these sports. Social media, new web and mobile platforms and technologies, application based interaction and different form-factor handheld devices have changed how individuals and businesses find and share information," said Grobler. "D4DR Media is looking forward to exploring how to solidify the foundations of these sites but also reinvigorate them to grow these great online communities."

------------------------------------------
About D4DR Media:
D4DR Media CC is a privately held company based just outside Cape Town in Somerset West (South Africa). D4DR Media owns or operates a portfolio of leading adventure sport portals which include Dropzone.com, Rockclimbing.com, BASEjumper.com and Divetime.com. These sites serve the skydiving, rock climbing, BASE jumping and scuba diving communities world-wide by providing platforms for sport participant and industry interaction.

Contact:
Charl Liebenberg
D4DR Media - Marketing Lead
[email protected]
10 Lourensford Rd
Somerset West
South Africa
7130

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two words:(and an emoticon)
Sangiro's Snyergy

That second one isn't a word... not if you spell it like that.

I unlocked this thread. This is a relevant discussion and legitimate questions are being asked.

4 years on. I still miss you.

Congratulations Omar! Well done maestro.

News stub

Thank you all.

Heya all,

Thanks you to everyone who took the time to send their feedback to NameMedia on this campaign. A quick update on where we are:

As Andrea mentioned above, the frequency cap for these ads has been reduced to 1 impression of the ad per user per day. Additionally, the ads will not be displayed in the Forums section.

This means is that only about 1% of the original campaign will be served. NameMedia was quite willing to turn off the campaign completely was it not for the fact that they are contractually bound to deliver impressions for this campaign.

It's not my place to defend NameMedia in this, however I think it is commendable that they were willing to listen and act on the feedback from the DZ.com community, giving up a non-trivial amount of ad revenue in favour of our user experience.

Thanks again for your involvement.

Hi everyone,

Yesterday and last night we discussed the Subaru advertising campaign with NameMedia, the owner of Dropzone.com. (You may recall that NameMedia's involvement with the site is to sell and serve ads. All management and operational responsibilities are delegated D4DR Media, the previous owners of the site).

NameMedia sold this campaign to Subaru without our knowledge or involvement. The campaign started running yesterday, and entails rich media effects across the browser screen. Our position has always been that we strongly oppose any kind of invasive advertising like pop-ups, page take-overs or interstitials, hence we urged NameMedia to remove the ads. They have the final call however and decided to keep the campaign running, tweaking the implementation to ensure that a particular user will not see more than 3 of the ads each day. Further:

- The campaign will end on Oct 17th
- There is an “x” box during the rich media extension that allows the user to stop the rich media.
- The campaign is targeted for US users only.

You are encouraged to send your feedback and views about the campaign to NameMedia at [email protected].

Heya all,

When we launched Divetime.com in November last year I started this thread to tell you about it and to you know we set ourselves a goal of logging 10,000 dive spots around the world.

Just wanted to let you know that we just passed that mark! 10,000 dives sites listed and going strong. 8,000 dive shops coming soon....

If you're a scuba diver, drop in over there and check it out. Whoot!

Hey all,

We are trying to be smart about where we spend our limited time and resources over the next few months to improve and build out Dropzone.com. We're also continually trying to better target our advertisers to ensure the ads you see are as relevant as possible.

You can help us do both these things by taking our short survey.

We do not collect any identifiable information and will greatly appreciate your time.
Take the Survey

Most excellent! Congratulations mate.

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Sorry things didn't work out as expected, but a big thanks for keeping this site going in tough times.

I have no reason to complain. While not perfect, things actually worked out quite well for us. This new arrangement is a win-win addendum to the existing agreement we have with NameMedia.

Jay has really been the one on the receiving end of this crunch.

Hi everyone,

This is an important announcement regarding the management of Dropzone.com.

As you know Dropzone.com, together with Rockclimbing.com and BASEjumper.com, was purchased by NameMedia in May 2008 and was operated by them ever since. Unfortunately, as the economy worsened over the past few months it became financially unfeasible for NameMedia to continue to operate these sites, which brought them to a difficult choice - either find a suitable buyer fast or shut the sites down. The first option wasn't really possible in these times and the second, while obviously not desirable became more and more likely.

After much deliberation Daniel and I (D4DR Media) has agreed to resume the operational responsibilities for the sites. We've run these sites on a pretty tight budget before and we can do so again. We trust this arrangement will ensure the longevity of these online communities.

Practically this means we will resume all day-to-day management and operational responsibilities of Dropzone.com, while NameMedia will handle ad sales and marketing. NameMedia will remain the overall owner and we’ll retain a minority interest in the sites as a longer-term incentive for our efforts.

One very unfortunate side-effect of all of this is that NameMedia was unable to retain a full-time salaried publisher, so Jay Young (j_ung) was let go from his position by NameMedia on Friday. This was a pure business decision and in no way a reflection on Jay's performance. I think we can all agree that he did a terrific job and added a lot of value to the site during his time as publisher, and we will miss him in that role. Thank you for what you did here Jay.

For the immediate future though I will take his place as head-honcho until a longer-term solution is put in place.

This is a unique new period for Dropzone.com in the sense that we're really forced to hunker down and survive a tough economic climate, while preserving the character and value of Dropzone.com. We’re quite confident we can do that while continuing to have a load of fun at the same time!

Onwards.

Heya all,

We made a decision to stop supporting the "Drunk Dial List" on Dropzone.com. This list was started a few years ago by regular DZ.com users (including myself) who wanted a central location where we could find numbers to call and poke some fun on our night out. I’ve received some epic calls, including one from SkymonkeyONE at 3 AM pretending to be in jail and wanting me to provide some legal advice.

It has become time to move on though. The last "keeper of the list" has decided to create a new list on another website. Feel free to PM Bolas for more information to get onto that.

If you have a copy of this list, please note: The Dropzone.com Drunk Dial List remains the property of this site. NOBODY has permission to share the phone numbers on that list with anyone outside the context of this site, and that has now been stopped. Please respect the fact that the people on there value their privacy, and an entrusted us to be the guardians of that.

It was fun while it lasted, but it's time to move on.

Andrea - that boy sure did grow. Amazing.

Sunny... did you take the red pill or the blue pill?

Checked your account - it's active and validated. I have no idea why you are not able to log in. Clear cache and cookies and try again?

PS -I suggest you use the Bugs and Errors forum on that side to get support from us there. We're not going to track this thread for Divetime.com issues. You can post to the Bugs forum as an un-registered user as well.