College Confidential is transitioning to Hobsons’ longtime partner, Roadtrip Nation, an organization dedicated to helping students succeed in school and in life. (Learn more here: http://roadtripnation.com/about .)
Founded by three college students who hit the road post-college to try and find their own paths, Roadtrip Nation has grown into a national television series, educational curriculum, a range of best selling books, and an online content archive that are all focused on empowering students to define their own roads in life. The alignment of CC’s college information resources with Roadtrip Nation’s career exploration focus I think is incredibly exciting for CC students looking to build more intention and meaning into their college search.
What does this mean for CC and its members? In the near term, expect our community to carry on as usual. Looking to the future, though, I see a more vibrant CC. I know Roadtrip is very interested in growing the community and its value to students everywhere. I know they will help CC keep improving the ways we help our student and parent members.
Some of you know that CC was independent until 2008, when it was acquired by Hobsons. Joining forces with Hobsons allowed us to build a much stronger and more reliable infrastructure, and now, the transition to Roadtrip Nation is adding an entirely new student-focused dimension to CC.
Stand by for more information in the coming weeks. Here’s to the road ahead!
I’ll say this, I am on and have been on a lot of message boards over the years and CC has the best interface that I’ve seen. I don’t like that you can’t edit after 15 minutes but I know that is an editorial decision, not software constraints that plague MB’s that are under resourced.
Yeah – the last major revision of CC was really a disaster. Still not happy with the current interface. Lots of long time knowledgable users jumped ship in frustration. So excuse me if I am wary of whether this will be an improvement for students and parents looking for college advice.
No big changes are expected in the near future. We’re aware of some of the less-than-perfect aspects of member experience since the conversion a few years ago, @intparent, and hope to be able to address them in a more effective way than we have been. At the moment, the focus is on back-room infrastructure and such that has to be transitioned without interrupting service. But, we’ll be very open to member input on what would make CC better for all.
As far as a career focus for CC, @HarvestMoon1, there’s nothing planned at this point. But, I think that would be a good idea. While college is certainly for intellectual exploration, with the cost of higher ed (and ultra-high loan amounts) understanding career implications of college and major choices is more important than ever.
I am still waiting for a “mark all as read” feature, which is pretty basic message board functionality and has been missing from this site since the last major transition.
I will say – first do no harm. The new owners might be thinking, “we’re at 20 PVs a session and we think that with X and X and X, we could double that.” But I’ll say that most websites right now – with the move toward mobile – are happy to get 3 PV a session…and I hope CC will understand the treasure they have here.
I would do little to nothing with the boards as they exist…sure maybe add a bit of tech support and wipe out the bug list…but every site has that issue. Instead i’d spend energy building out new products and then use the regulars here as first adopters…Keep the core as simple and strong as it is now…and then upsell (sorry for that painful word) the new functionality…new conferences…etc.
If the current platform can’t handle some of the commonly-requested features that members have been suggesting since the “upgrade”, then the software is clearly absolute rubbish. Of course, I’d be surprised if the site software couldn’t handle it, which means that the administration either doesn’t want to do it and won’t give us the common courtesy of just telling us, or else just doesn’t care to actually listen to its members, aka customers. I don’t know which is worse.
RoadTrip Nation appears to sell products and services. I hope they don’t view us as a captive market because I’m not interested in people trying to sell things to me.
It’s a win-win. More revenue for CC and a dream-thirsty market for Mike, Nathan, and Brian to peddle their “What should I do with my life?” books and DVDs and assorted merch. Nothing can go wrong there.
Maybe we’ll get the mobile site that works on tablets as well as phones and the app back. I get why these things have been left undone, after all hardly anyone uses the internet on a handheld device, right?
Actually they look like an interesting group.