Visordown

24th July 2016

Crash media | Forum | Motorcycle news | T.W.O

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Ben Cope launched Visordown in 2000. His ambition, clearly, was to challenge the dominance of EMAP by providing an online platform for motorcyclists via a forum, with supporting industry news and product pages. Growth was said to be fairly rapid and, depending on you who listened to, Cope was soon claiming anything from 30,000 to 90,000 unique visitors per month.

In 2007, specialist publishing firm Magicalia came along and made Cope an offer he didn't feel like refusing, and Visordown was sold for an undisclosed sum. We have heard the relevant numbers, but we'd have to kill you if we told you, etc. Magicalia had also recently bought TWO (aka Two Wheels Only) and had even bigger ideas of giving EMAP a good kicking.

Following the acquisition, there were various ideas mooted about how Visordown and TWO were going to co-exist, interact and scratch each other's back. Cope certainly felt that the two entities would remain separate, albeit with some crossover in terms of content, etc. And naturally, cross-promotion would benefit both entities. All this fitted with what Magicalia had in mind, a company which viewed online publications in a very different way to traditional paper publishers.

The buy-out package included retaining Ben Cope as the driving force/editor. That would (a) give him greater opportunity to take Visordown to the next level, and (b) give him some much needed cash to develop the site. Or magazine. Or eZine.

In 2009, TWO magazine, faced with diminishing advertising revenue, changed its name to Visordown and tried to keep the plot on the boil. But within a year or so, Visordown was entirely paperless, and TWO vanished from the scene. Disappointed subscribers were initially sent copies of Fast Bikes magazine as a cynical consolation prize. But many, if not most readers were less than impressed with finding the wrong rag on their doormats and promptly cancelled their subs (not without some difficulty in one or ten instances).

Note that there is another Two Magazine catering to fashion dummies.

Immediate Media came along in 2011. This firm was formed by a merger of various companies, including Magicalia. The new outfit boasted a large portfolio of online rags, including Visordown. Their ideas were big, but for whatever reason, Visordown was unloaded in December 2015 to Crash Media. Crash had recently bought Moto Magazine (a Motocross publication) and instantly claimed 175,000 online visitors per month. Visordown, meanwhile, was said to be claiming around one million unique users, also per month.

Do we believe these numbers? Read our minds, and whatever figure you see hovering there, halve it, then halve it again. Nevertheless, Crash Media evidently had big ideas for Visordown, and the forum remained an integral part of the deal.

But recently, if the wheels haven't exactly fallen off the forum wagon, some of the spokes have definitely worked loose. It doesn't currently appear to be attracting too many forumites (or whatever the word is), and many of the recent-history posts are pointedly left unanswered. Moreover, at the time of writing, the management seems unable to pacify its new found antagonists, many of whom complain that Crash Media is un-contactable.

Over many days, we tried the lines for ourselves. One was discontinued. The other just rang out. Half a dozen further attempts through other channels led to a cup of coffee and lie down in a dark place.

But the site is evidently still chugging along. There are fresh (or fresh-ish, news posts appearing at intervals. This, by the way, follows a recent revamp of some kind that saw all or parts of the site offline for days, or even a couple of weeks.

Ben Cope (as far as we know) has long since left Visordown. Other names and faces have been installed including Steve Farrell, late of Motor Cycle News. Farrell is a good journalist and is now editor of Visordown, and following his appointment we had expected some fundamental change/growth/expansion. But for whatever reason, the site looks weaker by the week which makes us wonder if Crash Media is serious about running with this particular ball, or if some kind of complex restructuring is ongoing, or if Steve's simply having a bad year, or what.

In terms of content, Visordown covers everything from general news to road tests to product reviews. It also has a link to www.getgeared.co.uk

which offers a wide range of motorcycle clobber. Get Geared, based in Leatherhead, Surrey, says its not owned by Crash Media and has only a loose connection with Visordown. We don't know the ins and outs of that, but certainly we can see a potentially large income stream there, and it's hard to see how else Visordown makes its money.

Visordown has in the past broken many news stories, but its approach and style is a little too "tabloid" for our tastes—and we can live without the constant rumours, much of which (perhaps inevitably) turns out to be unfounded.

For us, it's not a particularly attractive site, visually speaking. It's too "tabloid" in content. Too lad-ish. But it reckons it's the UK No1 for news, reviews, etc, and it still claims a very large numbers of unique visitors. Check it out and see if it's for you. If not come back.

Come to think of it, come back anyway.

www.visordown.com

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