OUR ORIGINS/WHO WE WERE
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 6:20 pm
This is a copy/paste from the original TAT, stating why the forum was started.
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TalkAboutTennis.com (TAT) was created to fill what I believed was a void for internet savvy tennis fans. There are many tennis forums available online, but I couldn't find a single one that I felt was moderated in a fair and consistent manner, that adequately promoted the need for mutual respect, and that nurtured a sense of "community". With a small group of like-minded tennis fans, TAT was launched just prior to the U.S. Open, on August 20, 2004. Although TAT's main focus is tennis, subjects of every nature are welcome in our forum.
We quickly learned that an excellent way to grow our membership was to offer contests that our community could enjoy and share in. In the early days, contests offered our members friendly competition, gave them another reason to return daily and also provided a conduit for personal relationships to form.
Our most popular contest, our Suicide Pools, are played officially during each of the four Grand Slam tournaments. Moose, the creator of the Suicide Pools, along with shtexas and members of our staff, manage these contests. Our first Suicide Pool was played during the 2005 Australian Open. We had 15 contestants. Early in 2006, Jon Wertheim, a widely read tennis columnist, began linking to our Suicide Pools from the pages of SI.com. This generous promotion was the catalyst we needed to begin to establish ourselves among internet tennis forums. Largely due to Mr. Wertheim's generosity we expect to host close to 300 contestants from all parts of the world in our 2008 Suicide Pools. Other contests hosted by TAT include the Prediction Contest, which encompasses every tournament played throughout the year, and four annual TAT Fantasy Tennis Tournaments.
In late 2006, we launched a website to complement our growing forum. The website was designed to attract tennis fans by offering links to other tennis sites and blogs, RSS feeds from tennis news services, and information about our growing community.
Later that year we launched TAT Pro Talk. Designed to present exclusive interviews with top professionals and other tennis personalities, TAT Pro Talk is unique in that for most of them, our members are invited to offer up the questions. Our first TAT Pro Talk, published in December of 2006, featured American WTA professional, Vania King. We followed it up in January of 2007 with an interview with Esther Vergeer, the #1 ranked female wheelchair player. Six weeks later, rising Russian star, Evgeny Korolev was kind enough to answer our questions. Since then we've published interviews with Sam Querrey, Evgeni Fedyakov, Jon Werthiem, Katrina Adams, Peter Bodo, and Jim Courier, among others.
In 2007, our forum and website were rebuilt from the ground up. We switched to the new format in April of 2007. Our new forum software allows our members more customization and gives our staff better moderating tools. The new website works hand-in-hand with the forum, pulling current thread titles, announcements, and news articles, and publishing them directly to our homepage. These updates are made in real time, giving a visitor to our homepage an accurate snapshot of what's going on in the forum and elsewhere on TAT.
Not to be outdone, 2008 has seen us grow by leaps and bounds, not only in membership, but in content. Early in the year we became accredited media, which gives us the opportunity to publish news articles sent to us directly from tennis organizations such as the ATP, WTA, and USTA. We also began providing our readers with coverage of special events, including Taste of Tennis, Venus Williams at the launch of her clothing line, EleVen, and Andy Roddick's appearance at Bloomingdale's to celebrate the 75th anniversary of LaCoste.
In 2008 we also began original tournament coverage, beginning with the SAP Open from San Jose, California. We followed that up with coverage of the Pacific Life Open from Indian Wells, California. As of this writing we've provided original coverage of nine professional tournaments from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, and are currently in the middle of covering the 2008 U.S. Open Series. Our original coverage includes articles, match reports, interviews, and we currently have over 3,000 exclusive tournament photographs in our photo vault.
TalkAboutTennis.com continues to work towards our goals of being a quality online community for tennis lovers and finding innovative ways to bring our members closer together and closer to the sport we love.
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TalkAboutTennis.com (TAT) was created to fill what I believed was a void for internet savvy tennis fans. There are many tennis forums available online, but I couldn't find a single one that I felt was moderated in a fair and consistent manner, that adequately promoted the need for mutual respect, and that nurtured a sense of "community". With a small group of like-minded tennis fans, TAT was launched just prior to the U.S. Open, on August 20, 2004. Although TAT's main focus is tennis, subjects of every nature are welcome in our forum.
We quickly learned that an excellent way to grow our membership was to offer contests that our community could enjoy and share in. In the early days, contests offered our members friendly competition, gave them another reason to return daily and also provided a conduit for personal relationships to form.
Our most popular contest, our Suicide Pools, are played officially during each of the four Grand Slam tournaments. Moose, the creator of the Suicide Pools, along with shtexas and members of our staff, manage these contests. Our first Suicide Pool was played during the 2005 Australian Open. We had 15 contestants. Early in 2006, Jon Wertheim, a widely read tennis columnist, began linking to our Suicide Pools from the pages of SI.com. This generous promotion was the catalyst we needed to begin to establish ourselves among internet tennis forums. Largely due to Mr. Wertheim's generosity we expect to host close to 300 contestants from all parts of the world in our 2008 Suicide Pools. Other contests hosted by TAT include the Prediction Contest, which encompasses every tournament played throughout the year, and four annual TAT Fantasy Tennis Tournaments.
In late 2006, we launched a website to complement our growing forum. The website was designed to attract tennis fans by offering links to other tennis sites and blogs, RSS feeds from tennis news services, and information about our growing community.
Later that year we launched TAT Pro Talk. Designed to present exclusive interviews with top professionals and other tennis personalities, TAT Pro Talk is unique in that for most of them, our members are invited to offer up the questions. Our first TAT Pro Talk, published in December of 2006, featured American WTA professional, Vania King. We followed it up in January of 2007 with an interview with Esther Vergeer, the #1 ranked female wheelchair player. Six weeks later, rising Russian star, Evgeny Korolev was kind enough to answer our questions. Since then we've published interviews with Sam Querrey, Evgeni Fedyakov, Jon Werthiem, Katrina Adams, Peter Bodo, and Jim Courier, among others.
In 2007, our forum and website were rebuilt from the ground up. We switched to the new format in April of 2007. Our new forum software allows our members more customization and gives our staff better moderating tools. The new website works hand-in-hand with the forum, pulling current thread titles, announcements, and news articles, and publishing them directly to our homepage. These updates are made in real time, giving a visitor to our homepage an accurate snapshot of what's going on in the forum and elsewhere on TAT.
Not to be outdone, 2008 has seen us grow by leaps and bounds, not only in membership, but in content. Early in the year we became accredited media, which gives us the opportunity to publish news articles sent to us directly from tennis organizations such as the ATP, WTA, and USTA. We also began providing our readers with coverage of special events, including Taste of Tennis, Venus Williams at the launch of her clothing line, EleVen, and Andy Roddick's appearance at Bloomingdale's to celebrate the 75th anniversary of LaCoste.
In 2008 we also began original tournament coverage, beginning with the SAP Open from San Jose, California. We followed that up with coverage of the Pacific Life Open from Indian Wells, California. As of this writing we've provided original coverage of nine professional tournaments from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, and are currently in the middle of covering the 2008 U.S. Open Series. Our original coverage includes articles, match reports, interviews, and we currently have over 3,000 exclusive tournament photographs in our photo vault.
TalkAboutTennis.com continues to work towards our goals of being a quality online community for tennis lovers and finding innovative ways to bring our members closer together and closer to the sport we love.