CW+

[Donweather]

So anyone checked out the new Coastalwatch Plus yet?

Anyone going to depart with their hard earned cash and subscribe to CW+?

I personally can't see what benefits they're offering over what was free to air previously? :?

[Trev]

Got an e-mail from them about it. Just deleted it without reading properly.

[saucy gibbon]

Better off saving your cash for this site.

[ajohnsen]

Hey Don, yes, I did part with my hard earned.

Why?

I access the cams frequently. Living in Marrickville, with limited opportunities to get into the water, I rely heavily on them. It was probably always going to come to pass. That's the e-model, I think: create a product, offer it for free and then, once extremely well established, start charging. It remains to be seen what content and functionality will be available for free.

I'm ignoring the elephant in the room.

[brendo]

Hey Don, yes, I did part with my hard earned.

Why?

I access the cams frequently. Living in Marrickville, with limited opportunities to get into the water, I rely heavily on them. It was probably always going to come to pass. That's the e-model, I think: create a product, offer it for free and then, once extremely well established, start charging. It remains to be seen what content and functionality will be available for free.

I'm ignoring the elephant in the room.

why dont you learn to read a weather map, study the mhl buoys and check live data feeds for coastal regions for winds? its way better, especially if u wanna do a dawny.
havent seen anything about cw+, but it will be good. surfers are tight arses and wont pay, and the ones who are to lazy to drive down and wont subscribe will prob stay at home.hopefully they wont provide free forecasts anymore,then watch as early surf crowds dwindle when guys assume theres no swell on the way, and sleep in.

[TMC]

why dont you learn to read a weather map, study the mhl buoys and check live data feeds for coastal regions for winds? its way better, especially if u wanna do a dawny.

Yeah why wouldn't you do that? it sounds way more simple than checking an app on your phone.

[Kunji]

Hey Don, yes, I did part with my hard earned.

Why?

I access the cams frequently. Living in Marrickville, with limited opportunities to get into the water, I rely heavily on them. It was probably always going to come to pass. That's the e-model, I think: create a product, offer it for free and then, once extremely well established, start charging. It remains to be seen what content and functionality will be available for free.

I'm ignoring the elephant in the room.

There's one born every minute.

[Donweather]

One would suspect that if they remove a significant amount of content from the CW free to air site, and put it all on their CW+ site (user subscribed) then this would have the potential to direct a fair amount of traffic to a current free to air competition site.

[2nd Reef]

Yeah, we're keeping an eye on it Don, but we've got no idea what to expect. The whole pay-to-view concept is a bit of an experiment - same for Rupert Murdoch as it is for Coastalwatch.

We've spent the past 12-18 months working on new features at Swellnet which we'll unveil in the near future. Just quietly, we're pretty excited about it.

Our whole site will remain free regardless of the CW+ experiment.

[Donweather]

To be honest Stu, I'm not totally sure if you're traffic will increase significantly. People would have previously checked both SN and CW, so you've already got the total surfing audience checking both. With CW+, I'm guessing that will just mean less people will now be looking at CW+, rather than any real increase in SN traffic.

I hope the above makes sense?

Looking forward to the new SN release, although one does have to ask the question why SN wouldn't go SN+ but charge less than CW+?? That way they'd have their cake and eat it too!!!

[2nd Reef]

Yeah, it makes sense Don, but like I said we're really not too sure what to expect.

In a way it doesn't really matter because we feel Swellnet has differentiated itself from Coastalwatch. It's been a long time since we felt like we were in a race with them. These days we've got an increased emphasis on editorial, webcasting gigs, and TV production jobs such as The Beachley Classic, while CW pursue other avenues. Forecasting is the only place we overlap.

Even our means of income have differed with CW relying almost solely on surf industry advertising. Well, at least they did...

I'm curious to see if it works but not particularly worried about the effects.

[Donweather]

Even our means of income have differed with CW relying almost solely on surf industry advertising. Well, at least they did...

So how does SN differ from this now?

[2nd Reef]

Well, we don't rely solely on surf industry advertising. Is that what you mean...?

Our advertising space is sold through an agency and, as you can see on the site, can entail any company/industry that's on their books. In the past we've copped grief for not running surf industry ads but there are also benefits, which, as the editor, I'm acutely aware of.

[crabmeat thompson]

As long as swellnet keeps being less uncluttered and easy to navigate ... they got nothin' to worry about.

[Animal_Chin]

4 reasons why I choose CW over SN:

[TMC]

I support SN because of their subtle prejudice towards Mexicans.

[Grooter]

That Flinders one hasn't worked for months.

The Trigger Brothers ones are always online though (usually)

[thermalben]

Animal Chin, we've got some good news - our replacement cams arrived in the office late last week, and they're being installed in the next week or so. And we've got a surfcam also going in at Torquay too, which will take our Vicco total to five.

It's taken way longer than we had hoped (to upgrade the Vic cams) however it'll definitely be worth the wait - we've switched manufacturers and the new surfcams are far superior in quality.

We also have three brand new Qld surfcams locations going in over the next two weeks, and a bunch of other new cams around the country as the entire network is upgraded.. stay tuned.