DISQUS

uway · 1 year ago

As a reader of all those blogs you hit the nail on the head. Tech Not only has slowed down but its as if nothing surprises us anymore. Where are all the flying cars all the tech people use to talk about? Robotics is now done by a car company? i mean tech has gone mainstream and has lost steam. It seems that Once you have talked about all the tech that you can find there then We have to wait for what tech we look forward to. Problem is there hasn't been nothing cutting edge since The Iphone. Its almost as if we are stepping back a couple of steps b/c its still a phone that does what a computer does. Even all the new websites out there are just copy of a copy or just a sight improvement to the current way of doing things.

robdiana · 1 year ago

uway, you are correct in that there has not been much truly cutting edge besides the iPhone. However, those "large" cutting edge ideas are few and far between. Incremental improvements are typically what occur in between the big changes. I think we are due for another website to be really something new. I would argue that the past two were digg (completely changing what we thought "content" was supposed to be) and twitter (again, completely changing what we thought "content" was supposed to be).

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

I think I shared that post because I was struck by surprise as well. It's good to see an outside perspective every so often so you can realize where you actually are.

Edwin Khodabakchian · 1 year ago

Louis. I am wondering if it is about early adopters versus late adopters or if it is about focus and letting users select what they are passionate about. May be Yahoo is trying to go after a more broad audience and they are exposed at the risk of that audience getting fragmented as they find sources that are more targeted and fit better their specific passion. It might also not be an OR situation: you might be OK to scan the general headlines to get a more general sense of what is going on and then spend a lot of your time in more focused destination. This whole content/news world is new to me but it seems to me that it is going through some transformation: one general purpose pipe to hundreds of laser focused pipes + the whole readers discussion and reputation angle which did not exist in the more traditional media environment. I am not sure what the end result is going to look like but it is fascinating to see the transformation happen.

robdiana · 1 year ago

edwink, that was really the point of the post. The early adopter crowd is just not reading the same news as the mainstream. If they do not read the same things, they will not know that Twitter or FriendFeed is the really hot thing. They have no clue what is going on in the early adopter world. Niches will always exist and are very beneficial, but the gap between early adopters and mainstream users is large and obvious. I do not see that much would change from the news sites I mentioned, but it is more a question of how things evolve to become mainstream.

Clint Ecker · 1 year ago

Maybe its just the sites I read on a daily basis, but I wouldn't consider any of those news sources to be "heavy technical" sites.

I don't mean to go back to a place I've done work for, but Ars Technica is a lot more technical and in-depth than those sites. Not only do they really only cover a very small subset of what I would consider "tech news", I don't see a large majority of the content there going beyond scratching the surface of most topics.

A few other sites I find to be good tech sites are TechDirt, TechLiberation, and GigaOm's stuff. There are very few sites like these, and it's sad, but it's the reality we live with online these days.

robdiana · 1 year ago

I see what you mean. What was meant is that they are technical news sites specifically in the realm of web sites, social networks and the stuff that the "early adopter" crowd tends to read. I also used those because they tend to be the ones people refer to more often. They absolutely do not go into heavy technical detail as there are other sites that do that kind of thing.

I have not heard of TechLiberation, so I will check that out. TechDirt and GigaOm tend to be a little different as well, but are good sites in their own right. I really just wanted to point out the difference between some technical news sites that people talk about a lot, and a site like Yahoo which is what more mainstream users would read.

Scott Lockhart · 1 year ago

Rob - great post. Its really interesting when you look at samples like that. It's something that many early adopters don't get. Real people have a passing interest in geek-tech high notes like the iphone and things they actually might buy someone for christmas but there's more to their life. This is precisely why we are targeting our new site, regator, for "normal" mainstream folks. We now have over 400 channels that have quality blog content on all types of things from alpacas to cars to sports to crafts... and we also have a healthy dose of tech too (maybe a little weighted too much that way admittedly right now but we are working on creating a balanced range of content that anyone could find something interesting in). We know we may not be geek darlings, but we are looking to build a business and we after the millions of people who apparently give a crap about britney spears and wouldn't know a Techmeme if Gabe Rivera bit them.

We go live to the world next wednesday, if you want a sneak peek at what the hell I am talking about let me know. scott ~at~ regator.com cheers

robdiana · 1 year ago

I have not had a look at regator yet, but I had planned to. If you follow the "we are looking to build a business and we after the millions of people who apparently give a crap about britney spears and wouldn't know a Techmeme if Gabe Rivera bit them" business plan, you may be on your way to making a lot of money.

Scott Lockhart · 1 year ago

Yeah, I downloaded that business plan from a site for $9.95 (and I got 300 of the best white papers ever written!), guaranteed winner!
fingers crossed... ;)
cheers mate

Edwin Khodabakchian · 1 year ago

hi rob. I think the comments help. But here is one example: my wife does not care too much about tech but she loves history, specially content that target 1400-1900. She has been able to find an interesting collection of blogs which focus on topic and as a result spends less time reading and watching more traditional media. The point I am trying to make is that there is in everyone a mix of early adopters and late adopters, the different is the subject matter and this is one of the reasons why blogs, twitter and even friendfeed will go mainstream.
Thanks for the post and the follow up comment.

Janet · 1 year ago

Rob,
I agree, the early adopters read & recycle the same news and what's new quickly becomes old. We forget that most people don't even know what we're talking about. But it's the Internet, we're not only used to things changing quickly - we expect it.
Plus, it doesn't really help most people to know about all of this. Not very practical. Marketers should care. Oh, and everyone who bookmarks web sites should use Delicious. Beyond that, it's just fun.
When blogging was new all I wanted to do was talk about it. Now I'd rather teach these things than write or talk about them.
Thanks for your insightful post - it greatly expanded on mine.
Janet