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February 05, 2005
Steve Park and the Un-Updated Website
So this (in part - I took out some info. about where to email for fan club applications) was what was on the message log on Steve Park's official site from Steve Park Motorsports: "As you all may have noticed steve-park.com has not been updated since December. We are in the process of designing and implementing a new website that we hope to have up and running by summer. We appreciate your patience while we make these changes. Once the new site is completed or even sooner, steve-park.com will be shut down, you will be redirected to the new site when it is up and running, so please check back and feel free to keep posting messages while the board is up."
They had to sue for the rights to stevepark.com since it was held by a cybersquatter and now that they won and got it I would assume this is all connected to that. However, what puzzles me is why steve-park.com is going to go updated until they unveil the new site which may not be until the summer. That's pretty unusual for an official site, particularly one that is used to disseminate information about races, appearances and fan club applications. No need to really update in the off-season but while races are going on that seems odd. I can only assume that there are legal issues or their deal with whoever it was who maintained the site expired. Still, as one who works on websites, including one for work, I know how important it is to use a website as a tool to disseminate information. Even when we don't update things right away at NYYFans, a fan site, we get heat for it.
Someone on SPC was pretty upset about that because she felt that it was a sign that Steve doesn't care about his fans because he didn't care about fans getting information about what he's up to. Of course the opposite is true - Steve cares very deeply about his fans and what they think. Which almost makes it even stranger that the site will go un-updated because her attitude is probably not unique and thus they will get some flack about it. Which will not be a good thing because the last thing Steve needs is another thing to feel like he's let people down about and then feel bad about.
That person on SPC, who does have a tendency to be very negative, was told that they can just get information from SPC, given that the Orleans Racing site isn't exactly a font of information a lot of times. The only problem with that is that SPC represents only a small segement of Steve Park fans. At times I think a lot of people feel that the only (good) Steve Park fans are those on that site but that is far from the case. Steve has way more than the 266 fans registered on the message board at SPC, many of whom have probably never heard of SPC and did depend on his official site for news and information.Particularly those folks who aren't that internet savvy and might not seek out sites beyond the official site. So I can understand why those folks might be a bit upset, particuarly those folks like the person complaining on SPC, who can't go to races, therefore can't go to appearances that Steve does, talk to him or cheer him on in person.
There are a large group of people on SPC who see Steve all the time at races, talk to him in-depth frequently and that allows them to really know what's going on all the time, which is very awesome and fun for them. But perhaps they take that for granted sometimes and don't realize that the majority of people aren't able to interact with Steve like that. The official site gives people who can't get to races and infrequently see Steve at appearances a way to know what's going on with Steve, as well as see photos and read race recaps. I can't go to races either and I often feel disconnected from what's going on but luckily I have other sources of information besides Steve's official site. Hopefully for the sake of those who depend on the official site for information the new site will get done sooner rather than later.
Posted by silverdsl at February 5, 2005 02:15 PM