2 Years of Just Football

Following on from our cake theme yesterday on Photo, Shoot – a brief public service announcement. We passed a landmark on Just Football last week as the site made it to the two year anniversary. (Hooray!). It is quite strange for me reflect on the growth of this site between then and now. Back then I made a completely random decision to air my views on England’s elimination from Euro 2008 at the qualifying stage in the form of an article. After making the effort to write it I wanted to put it somewhere a few friends and anyone else who wanted to could read it and discuss the arguments, so I set up a blog and slapped it on there.

Fast forward two years and just a cursory glance at the stats show me that, even as I wrote this at 2.26 am last night, there were people in Bristol, Portsmouth, Texas, Indiana, California, Zagreb, Utrecht, Christchurch, Casablanca, Konya, Islamabad, Montreal, Western Cape, Leeds, Saint Petersburg and Rio de Janeiro engaging with Just Football. I find that truly remarkable. Aside from the many followers of football reading our articles around the world, we now have a growing team of writers and contributors and it has been a pleasure to interact both with them and the numbers of visitors who do us the honour of coming on here and offering their own opinions on what we have to say.

According to statistics, the average lifespan of the 40% of blogs that aren’t abandoned after 1 month is 126 days. I’m delighted to say therefore that Just Football has smashed the record on both those fronts. And hopefully, we’re only just getting started. Here is what the experts at Fisher Price have to say about two-year olds:

“Two-year-olds are full of energy, enthusiasm, exploration—and growing independence. With so many new skills at age 2, your child can’t wait to use them!”

I’d say that just about captures where we’re at with the site right now. While I’m not one for blowing trumpets, and I am aware of the many improvements that can be made, one thing I’m sure of is that, like the terrible two-year olds running around households everywhere, thrashing about and smearing crayons on your new wallpaper, Just Football will continue to operate with the energy, enthusiasm and exploration required to grow into year 3 and beyond.

However, we absolutely cannot do it without your help. So while I’m happy for this to be a brief moment of self-congratulation, really I want to turn this into an opportunity for you the reader to tell us what you think of Just Football. With that in mind I created a quick survey and I’d be really happy if you’d take a few minutes out of your day to help us improve Just Football for you. Here are some of the things I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on:

1. Design – what do you think of the layout? Is the site easy to navigate and how might we improve it?
2. Content – are there any specific topics you’d like to read more or less of on Just Football in the coming months? What leagues or areas of the game would you like to read more about on the site?
3. Community – in what ways might we make our community areas better for you? If a subscriber, either by email, RSS or Facebook, do you have any observations about the way you receive our content?
4. Any other ideas or feedback – anything goes, big or small.

Feel free to give your thoughts either in the comments section or by shipping me an email or tweet. Please also do try and be as courteous and constructive as possible. Comments like ‘this site is crap’ really won’t help achieve anything – I’d rather you told me why it’s crap and then I can look at improving things for you. Here’s the link to our quick survey:

Just as last year, we also have a gift for you in the form of a spectacular goal that will live through the ages.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaQhF-523As]

So yeah, Happy Birthday to us – now over to you. I am listening…

Announcements, Great Goals