ITST Success - Positive or Negative?

[Oveur]

I have watched over the years as ITST moves from strength to strength, beginning and ending tours with success, recruiting new members, running excellent tournaments and undeniably creating a fun and stimulating community of tennis enthusiasts. The thing that has bemused me is ITST's lack of ability to commercialise the product they have, and with this topic I wanted to actually underline a couple of fundamental weaknesses with ITST which, if improved, would lead to a much stronger brand.

ITST has a clear monopoly on the market when it comes to giving tennis game players a realistic tour. Competitors have come and gone with limited success at overturning the machine that is ITST because it has a fanatically faithfull core of players. Even World Tours in certain games have not been enough to deter the ITST followers. With a bit of analysis though this could be perceived as a weakness, at least for the players who play on the tour. The reason is that with no realistic competition the ITST technology will never improve because it doesn't have to. Why would a manager, owner, director go out of their way to spend time and money improving something when they don't need to?

The thing is that the ITST has not survived the test of time because it is the most advanced web site. Nor because it is the most aesthetically appealing one. It has survived because it has an insuperable stranglehold on the community. Its snowball has managed to prevent other snowballs from rolling into effect. The nature of a web site such as this is that it requires a certain number of players to fill up tournaments and play matches before it will be an attractive prospect for even more players to join - thus the chain reaction continues and the web site snowballs into a success.

What if one day another web site was able to get enough members to start its own successful snowball? What if the web site had more features, better graphics and a nice user interface? This is not as difficult as it sounds, and what would become of the ITST? It probably wouldn’t melt, but it would certainly shrink.

I suppose my question is, has anybody thought about this? About having an action plan should a serious competitor get going? It is rather ironic perhaps that ITST’s ultimate strength just now could be its downfall in the future. It is important to take from times of surplus to use in times of need. If you love the ITST snowball then sign my petition for ITST to do some serious web development work to improve this community for a long time to come.

Some input from ITST management / web developers would be appreciated.


Oveur

[coke4]

All i can say is
Equites???

[djarvik]

You making a fundamental mistake. What I and many others look for in ITST is tennis. Competition. No one really cares about the graphics. People come here and stay here because of a long history of being the place where the best tennis players meet. I will travel an hour for a good pizza, why? ....when the place is filthy, small, uninviting. Simple. Its the best pizza in town.

ITST was never meant and (hopefully) will never be commercial. That what attracts me here....and many others.

Yeah, we can improve a few features etc....but, will that make a difference?

As I see in, ITST owns the market.....there is not a lot of room to grow. Yes, new members are coming in, old leave....and so on. But are there a lot of players we are not reaching? ....No, not a lot. Pretty much any Tennis Game fan knows ITST. They either join, or they don't. I haven't heard anyone not joining yet, because the site is graphically challenged.

Another big part of why ITST is solid as a rock is Management. Our management team and team of hosts are second to none. Its a fact. Yes, sometimes we have to make an unpopular decision, but we always do it gracefully and it is always being double checked, discussed etc..

So the answer to your question is: This is a free, non profit website....and that is what makes it work.....and that is why Competition failing. There have been 5 different attempts at taking a bite out of ITST apple.....they all failed, they all tried to commercialize and failed.

To my knowledge, this Website, Community, Brand is a passion and not a business. The sentimental value here is larger then the reasonable amount of money anyone in his right mind is willing to invest.


Long Live FREE, NON-Profit ITST!

[ACERBOMB]

ITST with any flaws it may have is by far the best ran tour. And for the most part the people who run it make fair decisions. Most hosts if they make a incorrect decision will listen to you and admit when there wrong unlike other tours.

To be honest I would never join the current other tour because I cannot get pass how they took liberties to spam me with my email that was meant only for ITST.

[Josenylund]

prepare to get burned.

[beltic caldy]

what a peculiar posting......

much talk of 'stranglehold' and the like - cmon pal, really? that suggests aggressive action to prohibit other organisation(s), which is a nonsense.

itst works and is popular because its a place for people who love to play TS1/2/3 to come to compete in an organised, regulated fashion - like-minded tennis-lovers with a good place to come and play. if there were other such places about, who know where people would go? the fact there there aren't, to my knowledge (and in my case, i found itst and stopped looking further....) speaks volumes for the nature of the site - if there was a significant body of dissent, there would surely be at least one good competitor-site by now, after al this time? That there isn't says much.

instead of preaching to the converted, as it were, if you hold itst in such negative light, why not go set up your own spot and attract members from there?

just a thought on a wet and cold night in blighty

[Moralspain]

it´s too late , i´m gonna get some sleep.... i´ll think about it over night and maybe tomorrow i´ll post something

[Rob ITST]

Just a few notes on the original post:

The ITST is not a "brand". At least, that's not the way we see ourselves. We're a community.

Our lack of commercialization is not due to any lack of ability. It's completely intentional. We are not looking to take in, or dish out, any money or prizes. We'd rather keep things pure.

You asked, "Why would a manager, owner, director go out of their way to spend time and money improving something when they don't need to?" It's simple: we care. If you think that improvements are not being made, you couldn't be more wrong. We actually have very big plans on the technical aspects of the site. The progress may not go as quickly as we'd like, but the finished product will be well worth the wait.

Maybe if we were running a failing website we'd have more time. Time to speed up these improvements, or time to make long posts about another website's flaws.

[ILuvBillVal]

Pretty strange that someone who has just joined the site is such an ITST expert and knows all about the "brand."

Please.

What are we, Pop Tarts?

Sounds like someone has been doing a bit too much "snow balling."

[jayl0ve]

What Rob said.

This isn't a business or a brand or a product...maybe you should put your lust for money into some other enterprise besides the incredibly small market of 'Video Game Tennis Sites'. We already explained (when you were Equitiesindallas) that ITST isn't for sale nor is there anything to 'sell'.

[jayl0ve]

To be honest I would never join the current other tour because I cannot get pass how they took liberties to spam me with my email that was meant only for ITST.

Yep I agree 100%, I would never want to be part of a site that uses such recruiting tactics. Terrible. #1 it's very offensive and immature (spamming), #2 I don't want to find out what kind of people got the *%^# spammed out of them and thought "Hmm this looks like a nice site, think I'll join this".

[emate007]

What are we, Pop Tarts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvhXiMzbINw

[Q. Reese]

Rob,

I am personally happy to see that you care about ITST and its members. Clearly, ITST would not, cannot, and will not stand without them.

Yea. The fact that men run this website (as in humans), it is bound to imperfection! That is obvious.

I have been here since 2005. So, I am very content with the site and look forward to see the changes very soon!

[Amazing Matheja]

Rob,
As a human beeig,and a person,i am personally happy that (even if it looks unbelievable!) you seem to take care of that site...
As there are some imperfections it seems that you are a human too...
I've posted almost 10000 post...so that shows that i like to be here and i just hope i will post some more while talking about changes that are going to be done...I'm happy to post so many "usefull (hopefully)" posts,so i'm happy with this site!

[Elargento]

itst is the best, i am waiting the hours for a new tennis game and circuit on the pc.