Category: Internet

ENGADGET GUTTED

Engadget is looking to “increase their velocity.”

Ten people at (Engadget) are losing their jobs, and the editorial staff will be split into two sections. A memo says strategy will focus more on traffic and collaboration with sales and SEO

Founded 20 fucking years ago by Peter Rojas, it was then bought up by AOL in 2011, which eventually became Yahoo, which has a stellar track record of destroying everything they touch.

From Engadget GM Sarah Priestley (via Daring Fireball):

“[The changes] will allow us to streamline our work, increase our velocity, and ultimately deliver the best content to our readers.”

I love how the new leadership of these once-beloved brands are hell-bent on winning the race to the bottom.

GOODBYE, VICE.COM

From the Wall Street Journal (below copied from 512 Pixels, as the WSJ has a paywall):

“It is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously,” Dixon told employees in the memo. He said the company could partner with established media companies to distribute its content. “As part of this shift, we will no longer publish content on vice.com.”

And before this:

A domain name and hosting aren’t overly expensive. Put out something that folks will pay for and maybe earn a living doing it.

The glory days are over. Time to get back to making good shit with some friends and hoping for the best. 404 Media is profitable after just six months. Jason Kottke is making it work.

“The market didn’t reject Pitchfork: Condé had a captive audience, and never bothered to make a pitch.”

Pete Tosiello 

Newspapers were subsidized by ads decades ago. Classifieds meant local alt-weeklies could exist. Banner ads paid the bills for websites, until they didn’t.

Then came the corporate interests, the “smart” VPs with their business jackets and jeans outfits.

They came in, had their $400 lunches, made their money, and walked away just fine.

Like I said, “Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.”

BLOGS AND MP3S

Here I am in 2024, reading a post linked from Kottke.org, and listening to my music files using an app called Swinsian.

Back in my music blog days I got a lot of samplers, pre-release CDs to check out before anyone else.

One of them was rough cuts and demos of ‘De-Loused In The Comatorium’ from The Mars Volta. I remember this on a CDR, shipped in a padded mailer. That was in 2003, before I moved to NYC. My goodness, this is a gem.

Bands used to post demo MP3s on their websites, too. I have a handful of those, too.

I’ve also got some files that don’t play, which I think maybe are tied to the iTunes store? Thankfully I don’t have too many of those.

YAHOO NOISE

The directories on Yahoo used to be edited by people, and as you can see from the image above (which I snagged from the Wayback Machine), it went deep.

The Yahoo Directory closed in 2014.

I’m inclined to write “imagine if we had something like this now?” But, anyone could build something like this for their local scene, for their state, their region.

And no one needs to make the BIG ONE, the supreme list of whatever. Everyone could have their lists of favorite bands, or art supply stores, or camera shops, whatever.

There are giant directories that exist like this today, I know. But they’re all flooded with SEO nonsense, scraped, void of humanity.

I think, if anything, we need to get back to human-curated directories and inspire everyone to make their own… de-centralized, as it were. This way there’s not one thing to rule them all, everyone just finds their favorites.

THE OLD MUSIC WEB

We need to get back to this.

The site is still active, and some of the links still work, but wow, remember when local scenes used to have websites like this?

I also found this page called Escape. There are lots of broken links, but it is still a reminder of what old websites used to look like.

I love how innocent and pure this bit of text is:

“An amazing unofficial Mudhoney page. It has everything about them, their side projects, and other sordid details.”

Like, there was a time when you couldn’t read every interview a band ever did online, or see all the photos they posted on Instagram.

Makes me think I should start an un-official band page or two!

STYLE

This is from Steph who makes Obsidian, from ‘Style is consistent constraint.’

Collect constraints you enjoy. Unusual constraints make things more fun. You can always change them later. This is your style, after all. It’s not a life commitment, it’s just the way you do things. For now.

Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you focus. I always pluralize tags so I never have to wonder what to name new tags.

Great example here is this video from 2yn:

SELF PROMOTION

Years ago, “self-promotion” meant posting something on a social platform, and most of your followers saw it.

It was great when it worked!

Then came algorithms, and now self-promotion feels like a constant battle.

It’s not you; it’s the system.

You can’t post just once because 90% of your audience won’t see it. This is why I’d always tell people, “Promote your new song a few times a week, at different times of day!”

But then having to post, plan, and schedule starts to feel like screaming into the void.

Oh, and then Instagram says it wants videos. Twitter removes links. Facebook and LinkedIn limit your reach when you include a link. Also, don’t say “link in bio!”

At this point, it’s not even self-promotion – it’s tap dancing, juggling, or card tricks in Times Square, along with 900 million other creative people doing the same.