It continuously surprises/annoys me that TechCrunch is one of the most submitted domains here on HN. Nearly every article has a breathless, faux-drama tone about it that's better suited for PerezHilton than a tech blog. And yet their readership appears to be way beyond that of, say, a Mashable or a ReadWriteWeb.
I guess it just proves that human nature persists regardless of one's technical inclinations. 'Valley' gossip, evidently, always has takers.
TechCrunch has always straddled a line between journal of the tech industry and gossip rag about people and companies in the tech industry. In recent years it's steered increasingly toward the latter direction -- essentially becoming Gawker: Valley Edition. No doubt this is because gossipy stories got more pageviews and more comments, and so TechCrunch focused its content accordingly.
It's unfortunate that such a direction gets more attention and more views. But such is life. If you're giving away the content and charging advertisers, then to some degree you're a slave to the almighty pageview metrics. This doesn't have to mean serving up trash to the lowest common denominator, but that's the easiest and most immediately profitable strategy. (Other strategies might include going upscale / higher quality / niche, and then charging advertisers a premium based on the demographic breakdown of the readership).
I think the point was that while it's understandable TechCrunch might do that, it's disappointing (and sometimes a bit frustrating) that those articles are submitted and upvoted on Hacker News anyway.
Agreed that it is disappointing and frustrating. No question. Part of me wonders, however, whether it's possible to be a mainstream tech blog and a non-gossipy tech blog at the same time.
Mainstream, mass-audience blogs always seem to take the LCD route at some point in their life cycles. I don't know whether they feel forced into it by advertisers, or whether they consciously do it in an attempt to optimize pageviews. Either way, the outcome is usually good for short term business, but bad for long-term readership.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 25.7 ms ] threadIt continuously surprises/annoys me that TechCrunch is one of the most submitted domains here on HN. Nearly every article has a breathless, faux-drama tone about it that's better suited for PerezHilton than a tech blog. And yet their readership appears to be way beyond that of, say, a Mashable or a ReadWriteWeb.
I guess it just proves that human nature persists regardless of one's technical inclinations. 'Valley' gossip, evidently, always has takers.
It's unfortunate that such a direction gets more attention and more views. But such is life. If you're giving away the content and charging advertisers, then to some degree you're a slave to the almighty pageview metrics. This doesn't have to mean serving up trash to the lowest common denominator, but that's the easiest and most immediately profitable strategy. (Other strategies might include going upscale / higher quality / niche, and then charging advertisers a premium based on the demographic breakdown of the readership).
Mainstream, mass-audience blogs always seem to take the LCD route at some point in their life cycles. I don't know whether they feel forced into it by advertisers, or whether they consciously do it in an attempt to optimize pageviews. Either way, the outcome is usually good for short term business, but bad for long-term readership.