I would say that our site's 2019 mirrored that of the teams we cover, if only because Dale Lolley -- or 'Lefty,' as he'd come to be known -- finished the year undergoing shoulder surgery and still toughed out covering the Steelers' closing stretch.
But the fact is, we came through it quite healthy.
As I've done for our first five years, I'll share right here tons of data related to the business, so you can see where we are as a community. And as you'll see below, almost all of it's on an encouraging, continuing upswing:
• Page views UP 9.1 percent: We finished 2019 at 30,104,403, compared to 27,593,147, per Google Analytics. This is a significant one for us, in that it strips away all other variables and gets down to the root of it: Were people reading or not? If people are subscribed but they aren't reading, they won't stay subscribed.
• Apple active app installs UP 3.5 percent: We finished 2019 at 10,257 active Apple app installs -- meaning that app had been in usage at any point in the previous 30 days -- which was up from 9,913 a year ago. And this despite the app having been painfully slow at times, with recurring additional issues. Amazing. Imagine when the new one replaces it.
• Android active app installs UP 11.9 percent: We finished 2019 at 3,649 active Android installs, which was up from 3,259 a year ago. This one, to me, is insane. Because this specific app's been a tech nightmare for us. I can't imagine how it's persevered. Moreover, it has me pumped for how Android will go once it actually functions.
• Social media reach UP 17.5 percent: Broken down: Twitter's at 35,257, up from 29,353. Facebook's at 32,054, up from 29,364. And Instagram's at 12,524, way up from 9,218.
The above four categories are the most powerful indicators we have that readers are more engaged with what we do than ever. Meaning that all of them -- except page views, which peaked at 40 million during the Stanley Cup run in 2017 -- are at all-time highs. To repeat, if we have subscribers who aren't using what we're offering, we've got a problem. That's why all our data focuses on usage.
We've got room to improve, too: Our number of completely new subscribers was 1,184 in 2019, down from 1,436 the previous year. We discounted more heavily two years ago than we did this past year, but that's still not where we want it to be. Expect to see this as a point of emphasis in 2020.
Bottom line: We're Pittsburgh's only major sports media company that's profitable. Which sounds kind of crazy, but hey, it's easily verifiable. And we're proud of how we've achieved it. It's the result of being careful with how we spend your subscription and sponsorship money, as well as maintaining our financial independence. We never took a loan, never took any venture capital, never allowed for losses, nothing of the kind. What you see is what you get.
Doesn't mean we'll never consider outside investment. But it'll be for the right reasons and on our terms.
Thank you so much for everything you've done to make this place possible. Some places tell you rosy stuff like 'We couldn't have done it without you.' Here, that's to be taken literally.
MY COLUMN BREAKDOWN
I swear, I don't count column breakdowns as the year's going on. I'd much rather have the subjects arise naturally, while keeping in the back of my head that I should split evenly among our big three teams.
For 2019:
Penguins: 75
Steelers: 64
Pirates: 62
Most of the Penguins' lead came from the obvious: They were our only team to make the playoffs and, even though they didn't last long, that's two weeks of writing every single day, same as I would for any of our teams in that setting. The one surprise was that the Pirates were that close to the Steelers, but then, some will recall that I wrote more about them than usual after the season ended.
There also were a ton of Tuesday Takes (which didn't count toward the above), three Riverhounds columns, one on Pitt hoops (another coming today), and a handful of other random topics.
H2P COUNT: 836
As of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, exactly nine full weeks since the announcement that we're bringing back Pitt coverage, we've sold a total of 836 H2P Subscriptions. That includes 45 sold in the past week.
Here's how to get yours.
NEW APP UPDATE
The current phase of the new app/site production is the actual building out of the visuals that've already been crafted, as well as our all-new statistical portals. It gets kind of quiet here -- for us, too -- but this part takes a couple weeks.
One new feature I haven't shown you until now is dark mode:
Neat, huh?
I'm not really into dark mode myself, but it's one of our most common requests from readers -- and certain noisy staffers -- and we're happy to be fulfilling it. It'll be available on all articles, either by preset or by simply pressing that little moon down at the bottom.
(Dark version of Taylor Haase sold separately.)
Still looking at late February at the earliest for an actual launch. And yeah, that feels like a long time away.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• New subscribers for 2020 are at 10. You can track this figure daily at the bottom of the desktop and tablet versions of the site.
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past 30 days, are at 85,772. I've been citing here for months now that the goal with this figure is to average 100,000, a number we've achieved regularly only during the two Stanley Cup runs. We had our lowest month since the summer.
• Our most-hit original article of the past week my column from Baltimore on the Steelers' season-ending loss at 14,431. The Steelers accounted for 188,378 page views, the Penguins 186,020, the Pirates 33,774, and Pitt basketball 9,534.
• We're at 35,257 (+76) followers on Twitter, we're at 32,054 (-24) page likes on Facebook, we're at 12,624 (+187) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
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