We're turning seven years old this month, and we'd love to celebrate it with you.
Yes, in person.
Mark down Thursday, July 15, 5 p.m., on your calendars. That's when we'll meet at Mike's Beer Bar on the North Shore for our first chance in far too long -- our entire staff and everyone who shows -- to chat about sports, the business, each other, whatever. It's a chance to actually get together, something we used to do several times a year, in Pittsburgh and across the continent.
If you've ever been to one of these and wonder what goes on, it's really just that. Don't bring anything. Don't expect anything. We get to know each other or, in the case of you long-time readers, we get to catch up. It's way more like a family reunion than anything else.
As for our anniversary, Dali has modified our company's logo for the occasion, and we'll be using it all month long:
Nice, right?
For anyone who's new here, we launched as a one-reporter, two-person -- me and my wife -- operation way back in July of 2014. By most outside forecasts, we probably should've lasted about, oh, maybe a couple days before I'd go crawling back to some newspaper job. Instead, and entirely because of the extraordinary community that's been built here ... well, here we still are. Stronger than ever.
Hope to see you there!
(Oh, and stay tuned for our first out-of-town meetup in forever, later this month in San Francisco!)
MISERABLE MONTH
June was, indeed, the worst, as I'd predicted in this space a week ago.
Our page views for the month were 1,483,535, our lowest such figure since March of 2016, and this despite having our 14th-best month when it came to site/app users.
That might seem strange, but it can be supported by a couple other striking figures: A user averaged only 2.9 sessions over the entire month. And those who did enter opened only 2.6 articles per session.
Translation: There's not much going on. Which there isn't. The Pirates are the only activity and, unless they tick people off, there isn't much engagement there, no matter what kind of content we create. The Steelers are in their deadest period of the summer, the dreaded month between minicamp and training camp. And the Penguins, the real killer here, keep exiting the Stanley Cup playoffs far too soon.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when June was our best month. Meaning, of course, June of 2016 and 2017. I could make an argument that this company's expansion into a full-blown media entity can be attributed to those two months.
Anyway, we're anticipating July to flip on both the football and hockey fronts. The Steelers will be in camp later this month at Heinz Field, and Najee Harris will be running real drills in real pads. The Penguins won't be playing, but they'll partake in both the NHL expansion draft and amateur draft, so there'll be actual news, access and all that.
Soon enough.
BASEBALL MOVE
Gerard Gilberto, who joined us earlier this year as part of our baseball coverage, resigned from the company this week. As ever, that's not something on which we'd elaborate, but you've asked that we share when something like that happens, so I'm obliging. And wishing Gerard well.
Alex Stumpf will have the Pirates covered, of course, with assists from me and our staff.
THE MILITARY DRIVE
Inspired by Josh DeNinno at Moon Golf Club, we're striving to connect an unprecedented 2,000 military veterans to their favorite teams with free one-year subscriptions in 2021.
So far, we're at 433, including 12 in the past week.
Every contribution counts, large and small, and they're all appreciated equally. Plain and simple, we don't reach our goal with just the big ones or just the small ones. All are needed.
The cost of a single one-year military subscription is always $20. You can contribute one, or as many as you'd like. And the process couldn't be simpler: Email me directly at DK@DKPittsburghSports.com and let me know how many you'd like, and I, in turn, can thank you personally.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• We'd had issues where the pages sporadically wouldn't load and you'd see those floating blue dots for far too long. That was identified and fixed this past week. Which has been awesome.
Our previous two tips:
• We've added a LIVE staff Twitter feed to the app! It's easy to access by pushing the bottom right button on the app, one that replaces the previous LIVE page -- collecting live game files -- that very few were using. One tap is all it takes to check out up-to-the-second material from our reporters wherever we happen to be. Without leaving the app. On laptop/desktop, it's just as easy: It's atop the home page on the right side of our floating menu bar.
• Go get an avatar! Go to your profile, tap the little camera icon near the top, insert any image that's 300x300 or smaller, tap SAVE, and that's it. This will now show as your image on comments, as well as the top left corner of your home page.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 401,712, up 34% from the previous week. Our most-read original piece again was my 21 Takes column , at 9,125. Broken down by team, articles on the Pirates brought 41.8% of our traffic, the Steelers 17.2%, the Penguins 10.9%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 29, down 32 from the previous week.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 60 for Apple, up 7 from the previous week, and 32 for Android, up 3 from the previous week.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 74,477, down 7% from the previous week.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 81,953, down 33% from the previous week.
• We're at 41,561 (+108) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,140 (+4) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,605 (+4) followers on Instagram, and we're at 4,727 (+201) followers on YouTube. 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
• Random geographic fun, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: We're now halfway through the year. There are only nine countries in the world where we've had zero app users. Eight are in Africa. Name the other. Hint: It's not some totally random, tiny island nation. It's part of continental Asia.