Comments on: DirecTV Is THE Service for NFL Fans

By: Dale Dietrich

Dale Dietrich — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:47:21 +0000

I watch people coming into my site via categories daily. If you’ve ever used Woopra you can watch the google searches in real-time that bring in users. I find Google returns people by category regularly. In fact I don’t think they return by tags. But I also use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin which I presume is what is drawing users in via categories.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:41:24 +0000

From my perspective, I disagree and feel that tags superseded categories when they became popular. However, as you say, they can fill different roles and are not mutually exclusive. Agreed on my theme and that not being on WordPress, if I were more into hacking themes. Most pre-configured themes and plugins I’ve come across use tag data in this way, but not categories.

By: Scot Hacker

Scot Hacker — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:27:41 +0000

The WordPress folks kind of abandoned them for ‘tags’ a few years back

WP folks didn’t abandon categories – they introduced tags at a similar level of importance. Two different tools for two different jobs. They’re no less relevant than they’ve ever been.

but the info is not added to the meta data in the HTML which would be helpful for the search engines.

That’s entirely a matter of how your theme is constructed, nothing to do with anything WordPress does or doesn’t do. If you want category metadata in your theme, put it in!

Use Categories for high-level taxonomy, and tags for finer-grained, ad-hoc taxonomy.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:35:50 +0000

Glenn, I did that given the iPod Touch streaming element. However, for several months I’ve been thinking about dropping ‘categories’ from the theme/presentation. The WordPress folks kind of abandoned them for ‘tags’ a few years back. Categories are nice in that you can organize higher level topics, but the info is not added to the meta data in the HTML which would be helpful for the search engines. And hopefully our titles and content are clear enough to figure out what the story is about. Also, our archives are currently organized by date and the built-in WordPress search is pretty good. So there may be no reason to use categories at all.

By: rob

rob — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:05:40 +0000

It’s my understanding that DirecTV has the contract until 2014 (I think) for both the TV and Online versions. DirecTV gave agreed to let the NFL take the Red Zone Channel and sell it to other providers, but it wasn’t to be the exact same channel.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:37:59 +0000

Filed under… Apple?

By: Ryan Roat

Ryan Roat — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:18:11 +0000

You can tell the NFL is beginning to realize the value in separating the online/mobile access from the broadcast access. The former should not be solely an extra contingent on the latter.

MLB is surprisingly the best at this IMO.

The first crack in the dam is the non-DirecTV RedZone–although it sounds like a pale comparison at this point, since it’s missing HD and the audio is satellite radio whip-around, rather than having a host. DirecTV’s RZC is the biggest improvement to Sunday Ticket since it’s inception (HD quality not withstanding).

I expect the NFL to try to leverage back the online/mobile access from DirecTV when contract time comes around.

That won’t be good for DirecTV as I suspect a lot of people will give up their $300-$400 TV package of every game, for a $150-$250 package they can get on a laptop next to their one big TV.

By: the_Bilbrosa

the_Bilbrosa — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:39:51 +0000

Actually, that’s an iPod Touch using my home 802.11n WiFi connection, which I can imagine is going to be better quality than on the iPhone on a 3G network. The quality on the PC on a WiFi connection was comparable to low-res Youtube videos. Definitely viewable, but only if you have to.