the big challenge with these pro blogs is that it isn’t enough to just be a pro climber with a recognizable name. you also have to have something to say.

the rss feeds and commenting tools are, of course, important. but if folks had compelling content without those tools, they’d likely do ok as well.

While in other activities the audience and the industry are steadily climbing the diffusion curve, the outdoor industry steadfastly remains lagging. I’ve encountered *very* few tech early adopters who are climbers …

Many industries haven’t figured out how to leverage most of the internet, instead they use it more as one big advertising strip with no content. Not saying that’s what they’re doing with the blogs, just that it seems to be the primary trend.

With the previous poster’s comments, maybe something will come of this post and more interactive features will be made available.

Thanks for the site. I’ve been reading with great interest as I resume my climbing!

As for this particular case, I used to work at the mag and am good friends with the webmaster. I just sent him this post, hopefully that’ll get them on track.

One thing you didn’t mention was the fact that blogs are something that have updated content on a regular basis. With both the climbing.com pro blogs and the bouldering.com pro blogs, the updates are few and far between. In the case of the bouldering.com blogs they had sparse updates for a month or two and then the updates stopped coming.

As for RSS feeds. In this day and age of having dozens upon dozens of sites to get information from, not having an RSS feed is a HUGE negative. Climbing.com has one for their news feed but not for their “blogs”? It is much much more convenient to receive updates from many sites in one consolidated place like an RSS reader and the sooner that sites realize that this will actually drive more readers to their actual sites the better.

The “garish ad” that you refer to regularly interferes with content on the rest of climbing’s website as well.