What's Going on With the Quail?

You might have noticed that there has been a dramatic reduction in posting around here lately. We haven't given up on the Quail, but we have decided to make a few changes in our approach.

We have found that posting 10 times daily is exhausting and mostly unneccesary. Our traffic data showed us that only a very small number of people were checking the site more than a couple of times a week; it seems unlikely that more than 4 or 5 people were actually reading all 50+ posts a week (my apologies to those 4-5 people).

Also, our traffic levels hit a major wall around 100 views a day. In my mind, this means that we have maxed out our local growth potential (derived from real life interactions and localized social networks like facebook and myspace) and we need to focus on building global traffic. Unfortunately, this takes time; more time than posting 10+ times per day allows.

Our new focus will be on generating a smaller amount of original quality content and then working to more effectively distribute that content around the web. We hope that this will help create a better forum for discussion at the Quail, and will help us to better monetize our output (ie get people to click on ads).

In the meantime, Dan will be moving some of his original religion commentary to his new blog Suburban Messiah. Also, we are working on creating a Digg group that can quickly and effectively push content to some of the top bloggers around the web; we are also exploring alternatives such as Reddit and Mixx. Additionally, we have created a group del.icio.us feed that will allow us to easily share interesting articles from the web. Finally, we are trying to improve our presence on the top social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn.

If any of you are interested in helping out with this, PLEASE get in touch with us. Many of these things work better with groups, and it would be great to get more people involved with what we are doing.

Thanks for your support this semester, and we look forward to an improved Quail in 2008.

Liberty University takes on new recruiting measure

From Suburban Messiah:

Recently, Liberty University made plans to build a new extreme sports park in order to up recruitment to its Lynchburg, Virginia, campus.

Judging from the dispassionate response of new university chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., there doesn't seem to be much more going on here than a strained advertising campaign to raise funding, which certainly makes sense from a business standpoint. But he himself seems unconvinced of the underlying message and seems even skeptical that kids would come to Liberty if things like this sports park weren't in place.

Jesus Battles Mickey Mouse For Theme Park Supremacy

From Suburban Messiah:

Thanks to a reader comment here on the Quail, I've tossed together a few quick thoughts on The Holy Land Experience, a Christian-based theme park in Orlando.

Recently acquired by Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Experience has raised its attendance by 25%, despite nearly doubling its ticket prices. Trinity seems to have nabbed a pretty decent business model, eh?