There isn't much to discuss that we haven't already regarding the Pistons, so this will be an official public service announcement. As many of you already know from when the merge went down, SB Nation is working around the clock, trying to improve its network. Last night it enhanced its product significantly with the official launch of six (of 20) regional hubs, including SB Nation Detroit -- the next best thing to DBB on this illustrious network of fan blogs.
Sean Yuille from the always great Pride of Detroit will be the managing editor. I was asked to contribute, and I accepted, along with Ian Casselberry, editor emeritus of Bless You Boys, and Ryan Weiss, an author on the SB Nation Red Wings blog. This won't change my role here, though.
This is a big deal for SB Nation -- it has already received pub in the NY Times and paidcontent.org -- and it will mean well for DBB in the long run, too.
How will this be good for DBB?
Well, for starters, with me serving as a contributing editor on SB Nation Detroit, I will have some say in the content that gets published there. For example, if you've already been on the site, I've got two of DBB's own FanPosts (brgulker's latest and Quick Darshan's) linked under "Detroit Editors Picks." DBB FanPosts will be featured regularly there, as your posts are more times than not of the highest quality. Therefore, in addition to the occasional front page here, your work will see views from those who check out SB Nation Detroit, too.
This may come as somewhat of a surprise, but there are people who are ignorant as to what's out here in this crazy internet world. I had a friend of mine who reads Pride of Detroit reveal to me last month that he didn't even know POD was on a network and there were other Detroit sports blogs within it. The regional hub will help those people become more aware of the great Detroit content on this network.
Also, with the help of every nerdy blogger's best friend Mr. SEO, readers are going to be directed to SB Nation Detroit frequently. From there they may discover DBB and, in turn, realize how freakin' awesome it is. Down the road, more and more people will read DBB and possibly even dare to test their basketball intelligence amongst all of you in the comments.
Exactly how more people find DBB once they get on SB Nation Detroit will vary. For starters, a DBB widget is on the front page, somewhere in the middle, of SB Nation Detroit amongst all the other Michigan SB Nation widgets. That's one example of how the hub will bring all the blogs together and heighten awareness.
SB Nation Detroit will also be on top of all the breaking news with constantly updating story streams, which will link gratuitously to the team-specific blogs for the more in depth analysis. There will also be story streams for games which will link directly to our game threads.
The other way more readers will find their way to DBB is through the updated team pages. The Pistons link on the masthead of SB Nation Detroit takes you to the revamped team page that has a large DBB widget located on the right side of the page with the recent posts. These pages now have the schedule, roster, and stats, which were on the old pages, but weren't as easy to find as they are now. These links were also added to the top of DBB.
The complement of SB Nation Detroit brought a couple other changes to DBB, too. If you noticed on the left side of the page, there is now a Fan Confidence Poll in upper left column under the blog logo. This, which I think is the coolest update, was actually an idea that was adopted from SB Nation's New York Mets blog (and Matt Watson indicated to me he wanted to do this on DBB all the way back in December when I met with him about the merge). Each week or so, it will compile all your votes on how confident you feel about the team. It's pretty self-explanatory. It will be awesome to see just how confident the readers of DBB are in the Pistons after they win their fifth in a row in Rip's return from injury, and then to see how that drops after they lose the next 13. Here's a screenshot of what it will look like after a given point in time. Hopefully, we'll see an upward trend that plateaus around 99 at some point down the road.
The other change is pretty small, but it's worth noting. There's now a column on the left under the RSS feeds where you can find any other blog on the network by sport or any given regional hub. This should make it easier for you to maneuver throughout the network.
So that's that. SB Nation Detroit - check it out and tell your fellow Detroit sports fans. Also, if you're on Twitter, you can follow @sbnationdetroit. Thanks for taking the time to read this. The rest of the day is yours to talk about potential Stuckey replacements and Nate Robinson dropping a very audible n-bomb on ABC last night.
UPDATE: Here's Sean's intro post on SB Nation Detroit if you want to learn more about the site specifically.