Rise and fall of chess.com

Chess.com as we know it today (that is, owned by the almighty erik) has existed since 2007. The domain had been used previously but it was in 2007 where all this started to work.

Without knowing much about chess.com's financial situation, I would venture it has been a resounding success. Who would have thought that chess could be profitable? Yet somehow it worked economically, as we can see it did not disappear.

New features were added, others were deprecated. And chess.com became the most popular chess site in the world. And that is where we are now.

However, the days of wine and roses may not last long. Chess.com is facing new challenges, new obstacles it might not be able to overcome. Just take a look at the following link, from Alexa:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/chess.com

First you can see is a deceiving increase in Alexa's ranking, ascending to number 1,145. Good news, right?

Only if we skip the interesting part. Under the title "How engaged are visitors to chess.com?" we can find the truth that lies behind.

-Bounce rate (percentage of people who only visit one page of the site and then leave): 25.30%

-Daily Pageviews per visitor: 5.93

-Daily time on site: 11'15''

The former is 17% higher than 3 months ago, the second is 10.42% lower and the latter is 13% lower. A negative evolution in the three stats. Good news again, right?

Let's analyze the third statistic further. 11 minutes and 15 seconds. You cannot play a lot of chess in that time, can you? Just logging in and managing to load the live chess page will take a big part of it. So what is left? Maybe time for three or four bullet games. And this was supposed to be a chess website.

I wonder what the statistics would be if we could take all the visits from forum regulars (like this humble writer) and know how much they affect the figures. I bet chess.com's position as the most popular chess site would be in serious danger.

Laugh at the statistics if you wish. Dismiss then. But then, when it finally happens, do not say I did not warn you.

After all, nothing lasts forever in this world. Even Rome fell. Sic transit Gloria mundi.

Is this part of Putin's active measures?

Um... what is that?

In before the...

Oh well, never mind.

I fail to understand how is your comental related to the topic, but I assure you I have nothing to do with Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich.

I looked at their site the other day. Those are estimated numbers if I'm not mistaken.

May I ask you why?

I thought the mods were supposed to remove criticism of chess.com.

First time I heard that.

I recall when you arrived  :-D

There are many ways to further monetize things. Owning chess.com itself is a big thing. Selling memberships is best form for any show /site to generate funds. But things have changed a lot since 2007.. Make the stuff interactive for all kind of ages. This game is played by all age groups and as well a good family game too.

 A visual representation of KantianEvolution's rant:

+1 <Human-in-training>.

It was really a ridiculous post - especially the comparison to Yahoo chess, a "service" which was inferior in so many ways and to such an extent, that I really don't know where to start refuting that silly claim. Totally non-sequitur as far as I'm concerned. 

The post you two are talking about got deleted.

so what shall happen this "fall" of chess.

will suddenly there be no chess except blitz chess;  then bullet?

will the forums be last bastain of activitiy of an arid and uninteresting website- or the first to go.  "deleted" because of an argumentative community; while staff has more interesting chess.com products to promote?

we roughly know how chess.com rose.... what your opinion on how it will fall?

I could write an apocalyptical description, depicting bullet players as the fourth horsemen.

I could also write about threads worshipping Fischer, and his followers marked with the number 666. And about a battle of biblical proportions to decide the best player ever.

I could write about all that and much more...

But I don't feel like writing more nonsense today.

Colliding with Andromeda doesn't necessarily mean the Earth would be destroyed. The Sun doesn't need help to do it.