PHILADELPHIA -- Always save the fun stuff for last, right?
Very quietly over the course of the past week, we unfurled the first of our statistical packages, that being for the Penguins, the one team that's currently in season. You can check it out right here, then tap on STANDINGS, STATISTICS and SCHEDULE on the big blue bar near the top of the page.
Nice, huh?
Well, get braced for more.
In addition to populating the Pirates and Steelers, in that order, we'll also have full, live box scores. Meaning you can track your game of choice in progress right here on our app and site without having to go somewhere else. There's an early version available now once a game's concluded.
And, to take this all that much further, eventually, you'll see official play-by-play incorporated into our live game files. Meaning information right from the NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball will be available right there amid our reporters' commentary from the scene, thus satisfying two of our members' longstanding wishes:
1. Get us play-by-play
2. Don't clutter the feed
We realized a good while back we were always going to need a pure live element for this app to be what we wanted, and it's wonderful to see it coming to life.
OFFERS JUST FOR YOU
We've got a couple of business partners who are making offers directly to you, our members, and I thought it'd be worth sharing here.
One is fuboTV, the rapidly growing streaming service aimed primarily at sports fans. In short, they offer all the channels you get on cable -- including all the sports ones, plus, as of this week, AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh -- at a fraction of your cable bill. Cable tends to run $200 a month, and fuboTV is $65 a month.
If you sign up through us at fuboTV.com/DK, you get a free trial and, if you like it, 15% off your first month.
There's another one from our longtime friends at WarriorAlpacaSocks.com, where they sell awesome socks. If you enter the code DK at checkout, you get 15% off your first order.
CORONAVIRUS VS. COVERAGE
We've made every effort all through 2020 and still now to bring you the usual standard of coverage for all of our sports teams, despite coronavirus restrictions, and we're continuing to do that.
The Flyers offered us two seats here at Wells Fargo Center, so Dave Molinari and I both made the trip to cover the Penguins' opening series. At PPG Paints Arena, at least for now, every outlet is being limited to one seat, so you'll see a rotation of our staff. (Taylor Haase is covering the home opener solo tomorrow afternoon, for example.) We'll do the best we can to complement whoever's inside the building, and we'll keep offering you what we hope is the best hockey coverage in Pittsburgh.
GET YER APP HERE!
Our app promotion's set to be unfurled soon on a bunch of platforms, and here's the spectacular new commercial we'll use, designed by Thad Christian of Mount Washington-based Phenomenon Post:
WEEKLY APP TIP
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
Use the team pages.
I know that sounds super-obvious, and I appreciate that more app users than ever are tapping the big Steelers, Penguins and Pirates buttons on the bottom bar. But it still feels like it could be more. Anytime I hear anyone say that this story or that story got buried on the home page, my reflexive reaction is that the thing was still atop one of our team pages.
The way this was designed, we wanted anyone to feel as if this could be their Steelers app or Penguins app or Pirates app, with one tap.
Also, as noted above, these team pages are the main portals to the statistical packages described above.
Give 'em a try!
Our previous two app tips:
• Alerts are now active on all devices. Be sure to turn on your alerts/notifications for news and new content. They won't just show up out of nowhere. You've got to choose to have them on. Go to your profile (your avatar in the top left corner of the home page), thumb down to Preferences, then Notifications and choose Select. Pick the material you want. Boom.
• This is a catch-all, but I find it's of value: When something goes really wrong, whatever that might be, just close the thing out. All the way out. Meaning, don't just minimize the app, but completely shut it down. Force-close it. Here's how to do so on an iPhone or iPad, and here's how to do it on Android. Then, reopen the app, and it's all like new.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 478,499. Our most-read original piece was my Grind from the Steelers' playoff loss to the Browns at 30,135. Broken down by team, the Steelers brought 33.6% of our traffic, the Penguins 15.2% and the Pirates 4.5%.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 70,007, a couple hundred shy of the record set the previous week. This continues to be the brightest of bright spots for us. Very uplifting.
• We're at 38,915 (-100) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,026 (+1) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,591 (-107) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com