Can't stand watching this level of screw-up with the site, user drain, security leaks, flaky interface culminating with all these horror gun adds. This can be probably taught in business classes as example how to take something that was successful and completely ruin it.


I wonder how much ClubTread costs. If group of us could come up with bit of cash, buy it from VS/Torstar, clean up from adds, viglinks and other bs, then run completely non-profit. Because some things in life are just right thing to do and however great capitalism is, not everything can be for $$. I don't think CT works for them anyways and they just had 30% layoffs in August, so they might be persuaded to sell


Just a ramble born out of pure frustration after throwing up from that "Wanna shoot the wolfie" garbage someone just posted. But this is what Lodge is for I guess...

It's a damned mess. Once an excellent portal now moribund. The legacy of Trip reports on CT is legendary. All laid to waste as the site and the CT community just dwindles to nothing.

I cannot believe they gather much revenue from ad bots scavenging profiles from cookies to dump these idiotic adverts.

It has to be run by someone that is passionate about the topic. nwhikers is a great example of this.

How much does Instagram and Facebook have to do with it? Another forum active for 10 years simply shut down overnight for an IG presence. Everyone's detailed and technical postings were simply erased :-(

Social media is factor, but not decisive one

Martin is right; you have to have passion to be successful. Current management knows zilch about outdoors and is little more than industrial Internet milking machine

But something will have to give soon. 30 percent layoffs are not because whole business model is successful. I even suspect reason all this gun crap creeped in is because of increased pressure to generate something. Soon it could all blow, and then CT will be for taking. I believe site is still salvagable. Run it non-profit by volunteers (us) that are passionate about it, generate enough from PayPal donations to cover web hosting+maintenance (Wikipedia or Progarchives model) and it would all blossom again

Yeah, that's nasty. yikes.

CT has a huge legacy of great trip reports. I search them frequently for ideas and to enjoy the stories and photos taken at incredible places.

The User Interface and overall interaction with CT became so clumsy compared to quick+dirty social media. That and security breaches, horrible advert assaults. As Zeljkok said, it's a great example of hoe NOT to run an online community.

What's unfortunate is that because the site now lacks the infrastructure to allow the easy submission of quality new trip reports, this value of this tremendous asset is slowly dwindling over time. Trails change, get rerouted, decommissioned, floods change the landscape.

Lack of infrastructure Kelly talks about is just one consequence of overall lack of care (or lack of passion, as martin nailed it)


I agree with xj6; trip reports is main legacy. Although unstructured there are posts by some legendary names in outdoor community and include peaks like Columbia, Robson, Waddington, Aconcagua ... as well as access logistics that, although dated, even now provide beta you can't find elsewhere in some cases. This could all likely blow soon, as Trail Talk hinted.


But back to title of this thread: How much do you guys think CT costs if someone would decide to buy it as it stands now?

I don't think the issue is money, I think the issue is time.

It is what it is. If you want it to be what you want it to be then you need one IT guy to scrape the site and rebuild on a new open source forum platform. The only thing you "might" need to pay for is the user database. But then those get hacked all the time.

That is horrific...at the shut down of that site, and sad with what is happening with CT...........

I had hopes,and there were some improvements made, with a little prodding from users. ... I see the life force ebbing away here...

k

From an archival standpoint, think about losing access to all of the past TR information on here -- that would be a real shame. If given the option, I would happily kick in a few bucks a year to keep CT online.

I do think CT has got something going that instagram and facebook doesn't, which is a long-form format that works really well for narrative-driven trip report information.

Isn't the content (Forums, etc) proprietary? User Database is of lesser importance (You can always start from scratch if necessary, but I'd expect 2 things have to be paid for if one is take reins over: 1) Forum Content 2) CT Brand Name. So my question really is: How much for these 2 things? Nobody seems to be able to make educated guess. Is it few 1000s, 10's of 1000's or .... (I have absolutely no clue)

The value is not in the content but in the potential to be monetized.

Looks like the monetization and visits are not happening here. I suspect the current daily visit numbers are nowhere near the numbers of daily visits when CT was sold some years ago.

What would you be buying? The site architecture is not CT. The trip reports from years ago are only a small piece of the pie. The community is missing. Many of the original members have moved on, either/or to other sites or other sports.

The CT ship has sailed, for a variety of reasons too long to get into, here. NWHikers has had its share of traffic issues too, but lives on. This place? It would take a lot of work, and a vibrant community to make it return to life again.

I'd love to see CT owned by people passionate about the outdoors and who aren't solely motivated by profit. I guess you'll have to make Vertical Scope an offer, Zeljkok! When you look at the VS website, the users of their forums are merely seen as a consumer audience. That's a major turn-off for me, as I'm sure it has been for others. The US based gun-ads in particular have made me not want to associate with the CT brand. I have even started to edit some of my old TR's.

I think in the right hands CT could thrive again. It's crazy to think that it lasted around 15 years in an ever changing digital world though! That's a pretty good run.

In the meantime:

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