The Story So Far

Before we get started, here is a quick summary for those who don’t follow the meta discussions in the tech blogging world that closely (you can skip the next two paragraphs if you already know the story): What started this whole affair was the recent revelation that Path uploaded its users phone contact lists to its servers to make it easier to find friends who joined the service. Path apologized. The NYTimes’s Nick Bilton used this as an opportunity to highlight what he thinks is a wider issue of startups playing fast and loose with our private data. Crunchfund’s (and former TechCrunch writers) MG Siegler and Michael Arrington quickly came to Path’s defense. CrunchFund, of course, is an investor in Path.

Siegler, however, took his argument a bit further and used his post to attack the state of tech blogging as a whole and basically argues that most writers don’t know what they are talking about and have to write too many stories per day to even try. Dan Lyons then used the Crunchfund’s writers’ defense of Path to highlight the degree to which Silicon Valley – in his view – has become a “cesspool” where journalists and bloggers are often too close to VCs and angels to properly do their job, personally attacking Siegler, Arrington, PandoDaily, Techmeme (“That’s right kids. Techmeme is rigged”) and others in the process.

In between all the name calling (“nasty little ankle-biter”) and swearing, everybody actually managed to make some worthwhile points.

Problem #1: Feeding the Pageview Beast

Siegler is absolutely right, for example, when he says that the “pageview machine” that makes writers post 4 or 5 (and sometimes more) stories per day is fundamentally flawed. That kind of process doesn’t leave writers time to research stories beyond a quick Google search, gets people to write stories about statistics that are clearly wrong (stat stories are the easiest to write) and generally drives even the best writers insane after they’ve posted their 3rd slideshow of the day or just rewrote yet another press release just to make their quota. Not every blog operates this way, but far too many do.

Some, like The Next Web, have mastered high-frequency posting to the point where it’s close to impossible to compete with them on speed. Others, like Kara Swisher’s AllThingsD take a more deliberate approach and are rewarded with frequent (and real) scoops. A lot of sites fall into the middle, but most have post quotas for their writers and even those that tell their writers they don’t care about pageviews obviously do.

Pageviews, though, are more or less the only way to effectively monetize a blog/news site these days, so there will always be some pressure to post some of these frivolous stories. Nobody has found a workable solution around this yet, but I like to think that just posting good stories can be profitable, too. And if it takes a few slideshows to pay for somebody to write a good, in-depth story (and then split that story up between multiple pages to increase pageviews), then maybe that’s the price we have to pay for doing business.

Poblem #2: Befriending the VCs

Dan Lyons, however, is also right when he says that PandoDaily taking money from VCs isn’t helping the site’s credibility (and the same goes for Siegler and Arrington when they talk about Path). The standard argument here is that everything is alight, as long as you just disclose your investments, but in my view, that’s just not realistic. The Crunchfund crew, however, doesn’t pretend to be journalists at this point and their readers know their perspective. I can live with that.

PandoDaily, on the other hand, I have issues with. It’s amassing a great group of writers, but it’s obvious that those who invested in it did so to buy a mouthpiece for themselves and not because they expect huge returns. In my view, that’s a shame, because the people there could do great things, but they will always be sullied by questions about their objectivity and motives.

Just Take Deep Breath and Be Better Than This

When you take a step back, it’s clear that these are real issues the tech blogging/journalism world has to take seriously. Rewritten press releases for the sake of fulfilling pageview quotas, slideshows and fake/wrong scoops aren’t helping the tech blogging ecosystem at all. Still, I like to think this system is mostly self-correcting. Bad information gets corrected (though sometimes the damage is already done), bad “scoops” are quickly outed as such, just as we don’t let writers with an obvious bias off the hook easily.

Michael Arrington says we are better than this but that our industry is unable to change. Tech blogging today, however, is in a transition period. If there was ever a time for things to change it's now. Writers, after all, are already moving around from one site to another frequently as new success stories (The Next Web, for example) make some of the old guard uneasy.

A lot of sites are doing very good work right now (maybe even “journalism”) – let’s not get too distracted by the infighting between a few of them but focus on those that are staying above the fray.

Owyang argues that there are four trends that show the end of this era (though he never fully defines what that “Golden Age” actually looked like). Let’s take a closer look at these, as I don’t think they work as signs for the end of this first era of tech blogging.

1) Corporate acquisitions stymie innovation

Owyang argues that as TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb have now been bought, the age of innovation in tech blogging is over. Nothing could be further from the truth, I would argue. The fact that these sites were acquired simply shows that some smart investors think there is money to be made in this market.

And what was the last big innovation to come out of TechCrunch or ReadWriteWeb anyway?

2) Tech blogs are experiencing major talent turnover

I’m not going into the details why ReadWriteWeb, for example, lost plenty of its writers in 2010 (including myself), but it’s obvious that lots of writers moved around last year. Again – I’m not sure how that’s a sign of how the “Golden Age of tech blogging” has passed. It simply means that writers moved to places where they could earn more money, get more benefits and better support from editors. If anything, that means the Golden Age of tech blogging for the writers themselves is still going strong, as there is clearly a market for them.

3) The audience needs have changed, they want: faster, smaller, and social

That’s not a new trend. What’s worth noting, though, is that the attention, if it really has shifted, has shifted more towards the aggregators like Techmeme. Owyang also uses Mashable as an example of a blog that has shifted its strategies in the face of these trends. I would argue that Mashable long ceased to be a tech blog.

4) As space matures, business models solidify –giving room for new disruptors

This is, of course, true in every business. Given that the cost of entry into the tech blogging world is close to zero (or $20/month for a hosting account), there has always been space for disruptors. Tech blogging isn’t an easy business, though (or an easy beat, for that matter), so we have seen relatively few people try to disrupt the business from the outside.

Oddly enough, Owyang also argues that “long gone is the scrappy new media entrepreneurs like Arrington who built a decent sized empire, cashed out, and moved on to to a traditional industry like venture capital.” This, of course, makes little sense, given that Arrington only cashed out a year ago, those at ReadWriteWeb who had equity only cashed out two or three weeks ago and that there are plenty of sites that could still cash out nicely in the future.

We’re just Getting Started

Basically then, I don’t agree that any of Owyang’s points demonstrate that the “Golden Age” of tech blogging is over. I do agree that we are at a turning point, though, but for very different reasons. I think the slow decline of ReadWriteWeb over the last year and a half, the high turnover at TechCrunch and a general sense of instability in the tech blogging world and the rising importance of the aggregators is opening up the door for disruptors large and small.

Saying "The golden age of tech blogging is over" feels a bit like saying "This party is over because these people I don't know showed up."

— Wired (@wired) December 28, 2011

For most users, bookmarks live in the browser and thanks to built-in or third-party sync, the only problem Delicious solved for these users (having a central repository of your bookmarks) hasn’t been an issue for years now. If anything, apps like Instapaper, as Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram also notes, have jumped into this niche with features that actually solve a problem for their users.

Update: While I wrote this, Delicious’ own founder Joshua Schachter told CNN that he himself also thinks that the service’s time has passed.

Share More – Bookmark Less

It’s a strange phenomenon, though: On the one hand, we probably share more today than we ever did thanks to services like Twitter and Facebook. The thing there, though, is that these are share-it-and-forget-it services. We send a link to Twitter and Facebook – maybe have a short discussion about them with our friends – and move on. Need to find something again? Just Google it.

There still seem to be some niche users for Delicious (sharing links with students, colleagues etc.), but for the most part, there are plenty of other solutions for this now as well, especially when you want to curate content and not just share some bookmarks.

My personal feeling then, is that there really isn’t much use of services like Delicious on the Internet today – mainstream users never cared in the first place and advanced users have moved on to other, better tools. That, of course, doesn’t mean that Delicious’ new owners couldn’t turn the service around by making it useful once again. Pure bookmarking services, however, have outlived their usefulness.