There are openings here - unpaid openings, of course - for anyone with experience creating a blog, following a blog, subscribing to a blog, or even just regularly reading a blog. As a tyro in the process of setting up a blog, there may be substantial need for guidance - did I pick the best site on which to blog? (Blogspot)
What is the better choice for our team members - subscribe or follow?
What are the comparisons of subscribe and follow that the readers need to know, to choose?
What is the best subscription service? (There are about half-a-dozen offered.)
What are the limitations of blogspot that are going to prevent us from accomplishing the stated (or unstated) goals of the blog?
Are there free sites with fewer or less intrusive limits?
I think you get the gist of what we need to know - and if you know, please comment!
Or, better yet, ask to become an author on the blog - even if we move it to a different site - and tell us the things we need to know, in a single, gigunde article, or a series of articles.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Obsession Or Fun?
With all the talk about scoring lots of coins, chasing MVP awards, and beating our competitors, I think maybe we lose sight of one of the major goals of playing online games: have fun! For those who are addicted, the competition itself becomes the fun, if there is fun in that world. For most players, though, I suspect that often we look at the coins, see that we are still short of max, but decide "I'd rather be somewhere else!"
Maybe ANYWHERE else, when Word Pop has just "cheated" you (or me) by dropping five tiles on the only column that has more than one tile in place, and claims the life was lost even though you (or I) can see that there was room for six tiles, and one spot is STILL empty.
Fortunately for me, my schedule is flexible enough to "walk away" for a while, perhaps to work on editing the HTML here or to recruit, and return later, when my anger has dissipated. Not everyone has that luxury, and maybe that is the time to say, "To heck (or whatever) with the max - I'm done for today!"
What do you think?
Maybe ANYWHERE else, when Word Pop has just "cheated" you (or me) by dropping five tiles on the only column that has more than one tile in place, and claims the life was lost even though you (or I) can see that there was room for six tiles, and one spot is STILL empty.
Fortunately for me, my schedule is flexible enough to "walk away" for a while, perhaps to work on editing the HTML here or to recruit, and return later, when my anger has dissipated. Not everyone has that luxury, and maybe that is the time to say, "To heck (or whatever) with the max - I'm done for today!"
What do you think?
The Race Is ON!
It certainly will be interesting to watch the shakeout as all the power players go for the MVP lead beginning at 3:00 AM this very night! In addition to the past leading competitors (most of them, anyway), there are now about 19 more super-collectors in the running. The final outcome will likely depend on two factors:
1) Who takes the most coins from Spin2Win and PrizeMachine. Those games appear to reside outside the casino limits, at least on most days.
2. Who has the most friends to sell-a-friend for coins. OOOPS - that is TELL-a-friend, isn't it?
I expect that maxing casino, non-casino, and search will all be basic to even approaching the team top 16. I won't be there, despite my recent string of doing all but the search to the max every day for the past 15 or 16. I just WON'T sell my one friend - and couldn't get any coins for my son's dog, anyway. (I think he still views me as a friend - at least when I feed him in my son's absence.) Plus, I mostly USE search, as opposed to seeking to max out the coins there.
I will watch (with envy, of course) from the sidelines, and content myself with recruiting, and recruiting others to recruit.
1) Who takes the most coins from Spin2Win and PrizeMachine. Those games appear to reside outside the casino limits, at least on most days.
2. Who has the most friends to sell-a-friend for coins. OOOPS - that is TELL-a-friend, isn't it?
I expect that maxing casino, non-casino, and search will all be basic to even approaching the team top 16. I won't be there, despite my recent string of doing all but the search to the max every day for the past 15 or 16. I just WON'T sell my one friend - and couldn't get any coins for my son's dog, anyway. (I think he still views me as a friend - at least when I feed him in my son's absence.) Plus, I mostly USE search, as opposed to seeking to max out the coins there.
I will watch (with envy, of course) from the sidelines, and content myself with recruiting, and recruiting others to recruit.
Why A Blog?
Tigers Against Diabetes is in a crisis. This blog is designed to offer an opportunity for the team to meet that crisis, and emerge better - and victorious - for having confronted the crisis.
For November, 2008, we are being throughly thrashed, although we have begun to rebuild ourselves to become more successful in the future. Now we need to afford the opportunity for a larger number of players to contribute beyond just those coins, but to extend to all the varied talents and capacities that must be represented in our more-than-900 membership.
It will look dire when at the first of December, we discover that four or more of our mainstays have left for other teams. That is, players currently in our team top 16 will leave us. That will eventually appear even more bleak when we see the margin by which we lost November's check, and count the members of our primary opponent versus our membership.
We certainly will miss both the coins and the leadership / competitive spirit, of those leaving - and I personally want to thank them for the great job they have done with and for us.
But - several things make the picture brighter in the future than it would now appear. First, we have already picked up a dozen players or more, just as prolific as those known to be leaving. So - we are not really losing, or even merely changing - but getting better despite those losses. That has shown in the fact that over the past week, we have moved from 34,500 coins per player per day, to now beyond 37,500 - and fully recovered all that we had lost at Thanksgiving as well. Additionally, the gains in overall membership have been substantial, so that we have a better base for internal improvement. Moreover, we have the opportunity to continue that same growth for the foreseeable future, and if enough of us pitch in to recruit, to expand that rate of growth prodigiously. As we must, for the opponent has a larger current membership, and a per-player-per-day rate of about 39,500 coins.
Next, the character of the recruits is changing somewhat: not only am I, at least, focused more on better IWON coin rankings, but I think that we have already absorbed the majority of our "lost" members, for I believe that most of them were early recruits to the team. As the Team Challenge has matured, there are fewer outright newcomers to suck into the team, before discovering that they are not a bonus for us. Now, I think, we can see weekly, maybe even daily, growth in our rates of coin collection, due to the new members.
Throughout this blog, feel free to comment as you please - except keep it clean - and find the issues or ideas that YOU want to discuss - or let me know, and we will either make you an author of the blog, or at least get that idea/issue published. Read articles, read comments, take surveys - then stick some feedback into a comment and leave that.
Something else: If you are an experienced blogger, I need some recommendations about pushing subscriptions or follows to the membership - should I, which reader / service, pros and cons of each, and so on.
Gooooooo Tigers!!!!
Update: perhaps time-of-day, or maybe everyone is resting for a fresh start on the new month - but only 36,000 coins per member, per day, as of 11:30 EST, November 30.
Update to the update: at 1:46 EST December 1, we are still at 36.000 coins per member, per day, for 931 members. I think that may jump up, though, when the several new members since yesterday, have a chance to contribute coins - which were likely limited yesterday, even though the members are in the divisors. I did not update the comparator for our opponent - too tired to care, since it is a foregone conclusion that they continue to thrash us.
For November, 2008, we are being throughly thrashed, although we have begun to rebuild ourselves to become more successful in the future. Now we need to afford the opportunity for a larger number of players to contribute beyond just those coins, but to extend to all the varied talents and capacities that must be represented in our more-than-900 membership.
It will look dire when at the first of December, we discover that four or more of our mainstays have left for other teams. That is, players currently in our team top 16 will leave us. That will eventually appear even more bleak when we see the margin by which we lost November's check, and count the members of our primary opponent versus our membership.
We certainly will miss both the coins and the leadership / competitive spirit, of those leaving - and I personally want to thank them for the great job they have done with and for us.
But - several things make the picture brighter in the future than it would now appear. First, we have already picked up a dozen players or more, just as prolific as those known to be leaving. So - we are not really losing, or even merely changing - but getting better despite those losses. That has shown in the fact that over the past week, we have moved from 34,500 coins per player per day, to now beyond 37,500 - and fully recovered all that we had lost at Thanksgiving as well. Additionally, the gains in overall membership have been substantial, so that we have a better base for internal improvement. Moreover, we have the opportunity to continue that same growth for the foreseeable future, and if enough of us pitch in to recruit, to expand that rate of growth prodigiously. As we must, for the opponent has a larger current membership, and a per-player-per-day rate of about 39,500 coins.
Next, the character of the recruits is changing somewhat: not only am I, at least, focused more on better IWON coin rankings, but I think that we have already absorbed the majority of our "lost" members, for I believe that most of them were early recruits to the team. As the Team Challenge has matured, there are fewer outright newcomers to suck into the team, before discovering that they are not a bonus for us. Now, I think, we can see weekly, maybe even daily, growth in our rates of coin collection, due to the new members.
Throughout this blog, feel free to comment as you please - except keep it clean - and find the issues or ideas that YOU want to discuss - or let me know, and we will either make you an author of the blog, or at least get that idea/issue published. Read articles, read comments, take surveys - then stick some feedback into a comment and leave that.
Something else: If you are an experienced blogger, I need some recommendations about pushing subscriptions or follows to the membership - should I, which reader / service, pros and cons of each, and so on.
Gooooooo Tigers!!!!
Update: perhaps time-of-day, or maybe everyone is resting for a fresh start on the new month - but only 36,000 coins per member, per day, as of 11:30 EST, November 30.
Update to the update: at 1:46 EST December 1, we are still at 36.000 coins per member, per day, for 931 members. I think that may jump up, though, when the several new members since yesterday, have a chance to contribute coins - which were likely limited yesterday, even though the members are in the divisors. I did not update the comparator for our opponent - too tired to care, since it is a foregone conclusion that they continue to thrash us.
Lost Boys Reconsidered
I have been running through a large number of team member profiles the past few days, and have found evidence that I was wrong about many of them. While I had thought them to be merely less frequent players, it appears after that scan of profiles, that many - maybe most - of those in question are total non-players. The ones I have looked at have been unchanged during a span of perhaps a week - and look to be very minimalist at best. If no coins accrue during a week, and there never were any significant coins, then even if the week is a vacation, or an illness, the player with no visible history is not likely suddenly to become a powerful contributor to the team.
I have come to believe that some of those "lost" players have indeed lost - their password, or their internet access. They remain on the rolls until IWON decides to purge them, but are essentially already gone. Others may represent either players who discovered that they didn't really enjoy online games, and may at best become very infrequent players, or players who have attempted a second identity, and found that to be too much trouble. (I gave some thought to a second identity, before the maxes were raised. I never started one, but came close.) Both of those categories are devoid of profit for us, but may sometimes kick in a very few coins.
Perhaps the best treatment for those unreachables is for us to stop trying to reach them, and ignore them until they do something to once again attract attention, or vanish completely from IWON.
Meantime, we apply that effort instead to go after new players more intensely. In line with that conclusion, we should soon begin a more comprehensive recruitment effort than the few of us currently engaged, can provide. EVERY member should begin by recruiting IWON friends. There is already a relationship, so recruitment starts off a lot more smoothly than would a "cold call" from some wordy blowhard such as I. I suggest viewing the profile of the friend - just hover over the avatar on your profile page, and a mini-screen pops up, with links to "view profile" and "recruit". HOLD THE SHIFT KEY, and click "view profile". If there is no charity team listed there, this is a prospect. (I do this to people whose profile is near mine in the IWON coin rankings, so I have little chance of catching another "lost" player - and you can do that, too!) When viewing your friend's profile, do look at coin rank - as a means to find those who, first day on IWON, six weeks ago, and the only day ever on the site - invited or accepted a "friend". If the friend is active, with a coin rank that does not use six digits, go for it! Whatever your message of recruitment, it is effective to follow up a week later, just as a reminder. More on copy-and-paste for those messages, in another article. Marie is checking on the other link I mentioned, "recruit", to see if that works, or ever did work, and what it should do when it works.
I have come to believe that some of those "lost" players have indeed lost - their password, or their internet access. They remain on the rolls until IWON decides to purge them, but are essentially already gone. Others may represent either players who discovered that they didn't really enjoy online games, and may at best become very infrequent players, or players who have attempted a second identity, and found that to be too much trouble. (I gave some thought to a second identity, before the maxes were raised. I never started one, but came close.) Both of those categories are devoid of profit for us, but may sometimes kick in a very few coins.
Perhaps the best treatment for those unreachables is for us to stop trying to reach them, and ignore them until they do something to once again attract attention, or vanish completely from IWON.
Meantime, we apply that effort instead to go after new players more intensely. In line with that conclusion, we should soon begin a more comprehensive recruitment effort than the few of us currently engaged, can provide. EVERY member should begin by recruiting IWON friends. There is already a relationship, so recruitment starts off a lot more smoothly than would a "cold call" from some wordy blowhard such as I. I suggest viewing the profile of the friend - just hover over the avatar on your profile page, and a mini-screen pops up, with links to "view profile" and "recruit". HOLD THE SHIFT KEY, and click "view profile". If there is no charity team listed there, this is a prospect. (I do this to people whose profile is near mine in the IWON coin rankings, so I have little chance of catching another "lost" player - and you can do that, too!) When viewing your friend's profile, do look at coin rank - as a means to find those who, first day on IWON, six weeks ago, and the only day ever on the site - invited or accepted a "friend". If the friend is active, with a coin rank that does not use six digits, go for it! Whatever your message of recruitment, it is effective to follow up a week later, just as a reminder. More on copy-and-paste for those messages, in another article. Marie is checking on the other link I mentioned, "recruit", to see if that works, or ever did work, and what it should do when it works.
Copy-And-Paste For Recruiting
Copy-and-paste is a powerful tool for messages. Whether in chat, on the team page message forum, or on another profile in the process of recruiting, this can be the only way one consistently provides the message one intends to provide. There are a couple of things to know, before you start, however:
1) The different areas in which one might post vary as to treatment of Word format, rich text, and text, but ALL of them do strange things to special characters that Word and rtf embed. Only text is apparently universal among them.
2) That means, that even if you use Word, or WordPad, to compose your message, it is not a good idea to simply save that, and begin to copy it onto IWON. The necessary extra step is to first "save as" .txt - then THAT file can be the source of the copy before the paste.
1) The different areas in which one might post vary as to treatment of Word format, rich text, and text, but ALL of them do strange things to special characters that Word and rtf embed. Only text is apparently universal among them.
2) That means, that even if you use Word, or WordPad, to compose your message, it is not a good idea to simply save that, and begin to copy it onto IWON. The necessary extra step is to first "save as" .txt - then THAT file can be the source of the copy before the paste.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Blog Status Update
The HTML editing is coming along nicely, I think: this thing is starting to LOOK the way I wanted. Now, I need to create or steal a couple more gadgets that are not offered here as "widgets": a listing of all post titles, to act as a table of contents, and links to get to the selected title, without scrolling. I may also want the same type of indexing for the archive, although I have not thought that through, yet, and may find that my early misadventures with so many edits and re-edits of the first post impair that process.
I want to think about a team blog, rather than "my" blog for the team: perhaps include a few willing members as full-blown authors, rather than readers who are able only to comment. With the HTML soon settled, though, the authorship issue may just blow in the wind for now - I also want to get to the process of blasting this thing out to the team members, and see how many will visit once it is fully publicized. The bad habit I have, of dropping messages on profile pages may just get expanded, to include that effort.
And, we may wish to openly publicize the blog to the entire IWON membership (although I THINK I remember some problem with making url references copy-and-paste in the chats).
That way, it could operate as an additional recruiting tool for us. I believe I have gathered about a dozen really high-ranked coin collectors over the past week, but I also know that we have some of our top 16, leaving at the end of the month, so that may only be a little better than break-even for Tigers.
If I start pushing the blog in public chats, and invite others to review, there are two immediate consequences:
1) Visitors will happen, and some of them may decide to join us from previously being uncertain that we were the right team;
2) Visitors WILL happen, and some of them may attempt to copy the device for their current teams. This one is not so good, for we need the edge. AND, some of the recruiting discussion that I have already posted, needs to not be applied by those who are not already using similar techniques. I don't want to start finding messages from Wounded Warriors when I view "touching" profiles.
This decision must ultimately be a team decision - probably introduced in the team messages, and comments to be collected here to result in that decision. However, even that does risk some leakage, so the decision may turn out to be moot, for others WILL eventually detect this, or our own defectors may carry the information to others. Even the Ask.com search may ultimately start to find us - I set this blog up to allow crawling by the search engines, and publication by them to their blog rolls.
I want to think about a team blog, rather than "my" blog for the team: perhaps include a few willing members as full-blown authors, rather than readers who are able only to comment. With the HTML soon settled, though, the authorship issue may just blow in the wind for now - I also want to get to the process of blasting this thing out to the team members, and see how many will visit once it is fully publicized. The bad habit I have, of dropping messages on profile pages may just get expanded, to include that effort.
And, we may wish to openly publicize the blog to the entire IWON membership (although I THINK I remember some problem with making url references copy-and-paste in the chats).
That way, it could operate as an additional recruiting tool for us. I believe I have gathered about a dozen really high-ranked coin collectors over the past week, but I also know that we have some of our top 16, leaving at the end of the month, so that may only be a little better than break-even for Tigers.
If I start pushing the blog in public chats, and invite others to review, there are two immediate consequences:
1) Visitors will happen, and some of them may decide to join us from previously being uncertain that we were the right team;
2) Visitors WILL happen, and some of them may attempt to copy the device for their current teams. This one is not so good, for we need the edge. AND, some of the recruiting discussion that I have already posted, needs to not be applied by those who are not already using similar techniques. I don't want to start finding messages from Wounded Warriors when I view "touching" profiles.
This decision must ultimately be a team decision - probably introduced in the team messages, and comments to be collected here to result in that decision. However, even that does risk some leakage, so the decision may turn out to be moot, for others WILL eventually detect this, or our own defectors may carry the information to others. Even the Ask.com search may ultimately start to find us - I set this blog up to allow crawling by the search engines, and publication by them to their blog rolls.
Blog Status?
I am working on editing the HTML / Blogger script now - the first focus was to steal a template that readily and fully supported the sidebar - I found Rounders 4. The problem was, that Rounders 4 has a really terrible color scheme and some graphics that annoy me. So - after a bit of searching, I decided that I would be unable to find a better template. Thus, I am using the corpse of Rounders 4, and editing.
There are some annoying problems with that approach, too: one must always save the last functioning template, in case the changes DON'T function; but one cannot merely edit that save, nor a copy of that save, for they are xml documents, and want to act when clicked. Not good. Online edit is better, in that one can SEE the code, and change it. However, the Blogger editor is weak - no search - much less, search-and-replace. Now one must save the template as xml, then again as copy-and-paste text, then use an independent editor to find the areas to change, and change them. And after each change, reload that as the new template, and view the blog to find the result - good or bad - and repeat. Slower - MUCH slower - than I wanted, but not such a bad thing, either, for it is forcing me to relearn HTML - once I was GOOD - 15 or so years ago - and could again become at least adequate in this process. And it saves the IWON world from all the recruiting I would be doing, if not this. I am sure everyone breaths a sigh of relief at all those messages and recruitments not received on the profile page, and the ability to play a slots game without having to mute me in order to see the chat.
Once I am fairly well satisfied, I plan to begin pushing the blog at the team members I can reach - first in team messages, then on team profile pages, then in open chat as part of the initial recruitment. Then, participation here will begin to allow the team, I hope, to grow together, to become more cohesive, and to help us figure out how to reach our "Lost Tribes".
There are some annoying problems with that approach, too: one must always save the last functioning template, in case the changes DON'T function; but one cannot merely edit that save, nor a copy of that save, for they are xml documents, and want to act when clicked. Not good. Online edit is better, in that one can SEE the code, and change it. However, the Blogger editor is weak - no search - much less, search-and-replace. Now one must save the template as xml, then again as copy-and-paste text, then use an independent editor to find the areas to change, and change them. And after each change, reload that as the new template, and view the blog to find the result - good or bad - and repeat. Slower - MUCH slower - than I wanted, but not such a bad thing, either, for it is forcing me to relearn HTML - once I was GOOD - 15 or so years ago - and could again become at least adequate in this process. And it saves the IWON world from all the recruiting I would be doing, if not this. I am sure everyone breaths a sigh of relief at all those messages and recruitments not received on the profile page, and the ability to play a slots game without having to mute me in order to see the chat.
Once I am fairly well satisfied, I plan to begin pushing the blog at the team members I can reach - first in team messages, then on team profile pages, then in open chat as part of the initial recruitment. Then, participation here will begin to allow the team, I hope, to grow together, to become more cohesive, and to help us figure out how to reach our "Lost Tribes".
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Inexperience Takes A Toll
I am utterly new at this endeavor, so I will make mistakes. Three I already see:
1) I have been editing and re-editing the first post, which leaves the archive useless.
I do not know if that will prove to be a problem, but it may.
2) I have no clear understanding of what happens when someone subscribes. If the subscription is for email, that might be one set of problems; if it involves an RSS feed, that is another set. SOLUTION: I am trying out a subscription through google reader. I am not fond of it, so far, since it shows the blog with an extra item, and I cannot tell why the extra article. Also, I am unsure what the reader DOES when something changes - does it somehow tell me?
3) Lack of planning is a problem, too: I want the first post to be always on top, but I have no clue how to arrange that. Newer always goes to the top, and that means follow-up posts come before that which they follow up. SOLUTION: assign a future date to that post, and it will be on top until the assigned date.
1) I have been editing and re-editing the first post, which leaves the archive useless.
I do not know if that will prove to be a problem, but it may.
2) I have no clear understanding of what happens when someone subscribes. If the subscription is for email, that might be one set of problems; if it involves an RSS feed, that is another set. SOLUTION: I am trying out a subscription through google reader. I am not fond of it, so far, since it shows the blog with an extra item, and I cannot tell why the extra article. Also, I am unsure what the reader DOES when something changes - does it somehow tell me?
3) Lack of planning is a problem, too: I want the first post to be always on top, but I have no clue how to arrange that. Newer always goes to the top, and that means follow-up posts come before that which they follow up. SOLUTION: assign a future date to that post, and it will be on top until the assigned date.
Why A Blog? Why THIS Blog?
Tigers Against Diabetes is in a crisis. We face this crisis not because we are not trying to win - but because we are both failing to score enough coins, and because we are not recruiting fast enough to gain on our competition.
Part of the problem lies in the realities of the IWON world: although we have about 40 really dedicated players, who max most days, and visit the team page; and perhaps 150 more who play most days, and visit the team page at times, we also have almost 700 players who NEVER visit the team page, who play infrequently, and who may not even know about the profile page, or the messages that might appear there. Many of the subject group have by now forgotten even JOINING the team, and have no contact with us, or anyone who would remind them.
We may cheer and compete - the 40 players - and even recruit - our IWON friends and chat buddies, and anyone else we meet; but we can no longer expect to WIN, unless we can do more than that.
The easiest solution would be to somehow convert all those 700 players (and even the 150) to IWON addicts, maxing every day, and recruiting everyone as a reflex. That will probably not happen, even though it would be really great for the team. Some families might object, or some employers - but do we let THAT stop us? We need some means to reach those players - and I cannot think of any at this moment. In desperation, I am working on this blog, in hopes that something will click - but the blog faces many of the same problems the team faces: how to get the attention of the people we need to reach? And how to turn THEIR efforts toward the (presumably shared) goal of garnering coins to win the checks?
Another, different, direction, involves outright recruitment, with an eye toward luring steady, daily players - those who will visit the team page for updates, read the messages on their profile pages, and contribute more coins per day, than our current average of 37,500. That actually sounds easier to me, and more likely to succeed in curing our problems. The question then becomes, how do we get them to join? Next, how do we keep them with this team? I have started recruiting players whom I "touch" in the IWON coin rankings - first, looking at the profile to check that they are not already on a charity team, then hitting the "recruit" button, and leaving a (necessarily) brief message on the profile page. That has produced some notable successes, but many more failures. Unlike chatting players whom one encounters in the games, this approach does not usually produce an answer to "why not join Tigers?". If there is any response at all, it is often terse and slightly caustic.
The advantage is that these are all quite active players, so a success is a huge gain for the team. They got that ranking by playing a lot, and until employers or family intercede, will likely continue to play a lot. Since Irankin is driving me through the rankings, I keep "touching" better players every day. And since the rankings are quite volatile, even if I stood still, there would still be 15 different players "touching" me each day.
Perhaps some of our other active players could also recruit in that fashion? It might take a month to really see results, but if we picked up even a dozen more of the core group, that would improve the team average tremendously. If the team average were to double, we would certainly be leading now, by a HUGE margin, even with the same number of players - and we would simultaneously be increasing the number of players, further increasing that lead. That is what we want - to lead clearly, and WIN! No more sweaty waits to see what the other team loses from THEIR huge lead - but a clear-cut victory and $10000 for the ADA.
Part of the problem lies in the realities of the IWON world: although we have about 40 really dedicated players, who max most days, and visit the team page; and perhaps 150 more who play most days, and visit the team page at times, we also have almost 700 players who NEVER visit the team page, who play infrequently, and who may not even know about the profile page, or the messages that might appear there. Many of the subject group have by now forgotten even JOINING the team, and have no contact with us, or anyone who would remind them.
We may cheer and compete - the 40 players - and even recruit - our IWON friends and chat buddies, and anyone else we meet; but we can no longer expect to WIN, unless we can do more than that.
The easiest solution would be to somehow convert all those 700 players (and even the 150) to IWON addicts, maxing every day, and recruiting everyone as a reflex. That will probably not happen, even though it would be really great for the team. Some families might object, or some employers - but do we let THAT stop us? We need some means to reach those players - and I cannot think of any at this moment. In desperation, I am working on this blog, in hopes that something will click - but the blog faces many of the same problems the team faces: how to get the attention of the people we need to reach? And how to turn THEIR efforts toward the (presumably shared) goal of garnering coins to win the checks?
Another, different, direction, involves outright recruitment, with an eye toward luring steady, daily players - those who will visit the team page for updates, read the messages on their profile pages, and contribute more coins per day, than our current average of 37,500. That actually sounds easier to me, and more likely to succeed in curing our problems. The question then becomes, how do we get them to join? Next, how do we keep them with this team? I have started recruiting players whom I "touch" in the IWON coin rankings - first, looking at the profile to check that they are not already on a charity team, then hitting the "recruit" button, and leaving a (necessarily) brief message on the profile page. That has produced some notable successes, but many more failures. Unlike chatting players whom one encounters in the games, this approach does not usually produce an answer to "why not join Tigers?". If there is any response at all, it is often terse and slightly caustic.
The advantage is that these are all quite active players, so a success is a huge gain for the team. They got that ranking by playing a lot, and until employers or family intercede, will likely continue to play a lot. Since Irankin is driving me through the rankings, I keep "touching" better players every day. And since the rankings are quite volatile, even if I stood still, there would still be 15 different players "touching" me each day.
Perhaps some of our other active players could also recruit in that fashion? It might take a month to really see results, but if we picked up even a dozen more of the core group, that would improve the team average tremendously. If the team average were to double, we would certainly be leading now, by a HUGE margin, even with the same number of players - and we would simultaneously be increasing the number of players, further increasing that lead. That is what we want - to lead clearly, and WIN! No more sweaty waits to see what the other team loses from THEIR huge lead - but a clear-cut victory and $10000 for the ADA.
No News ?
It seems that between the lack of any news, and the battle that has overtaken us, to regain third place, or the very last money slot, there has not been much going on here. That is true, and arises not only from the press of working for the team, but also from that lack of things to write about. Sorry, we just write what feels right.
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