7 ms·

Why Mashable flamed out

59 points by prawn 9y ago

grabcocque 9y ago
There's a remarkable amount of entitlement in that article. Spoiler alert: lots and lots of hard-working, promising startups don't become unicorns. Lots just die, many just slowly stagnate, a few achieve a decent niche and are perfectly happy with it. There's no automatic entitlement to be a Buzzfeed just because you worked hard and were there at the start.
m4tthumphrey 9y ago
I have to say I'm happy Mashable failed. I used to visit Mashable regularly. 95% of my visits would originate from Facebook; mainly memes, click bait and other time wasters but it got me through the boring times at work or on the toilet. They always had ads but never enough to annoy me or get in the way. The years went on and then I started to notice the ad technique of displaying lists as a slideshow on multiple "pages". Followed by the modal popups "Sign up to our newsletter" on every visit. Followed by the site simply not functioning on a mobile. I even tweeted about that one, [0] which incidentally was my last tweet about them (and probably the last time I visited them). [0] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Am4tthumphrey%20mashable&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Am4tthumphrey%20mashable&...
gorbachev 9y ago
"10 reasons why..." That's why they failed.
- nasredin 9y ago
  Are you sure it's not because of "this one weird trick..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements
spchampion2 9y ago
There was a period for me around 2008 where Mashable was one of my go-to sites for tech news. It was like a more fun, less grumpy version of TechCrunch. And then over time I read it less and less, until one day I realized that my Facebook feed was a good 60% non-tech click bait posts from Mashable. I unliked their page, and that was the end of my relationship with them. The problem was that I think they were always a bit me too in their coverage from the start. Even in their tech news days, they were never quite on top of startup news like TechCrunch. It's not a surprise that they also got lost chasing after BuzzFeed as well.
- mtgx 9y ago
  TheVerge has been following down that path for a while, too, ever since they decided they need to follow "tech pop culture" or something. I used to be daily on that site, now it's more like whenever I randomly see one of their popular posts on Reddit (which is rather rare these days).
  - arbie 9y ago
    Agreed. "This Is My Next" had more quality articles in its short run than The Verge has had in any given month.
kennydude 9y ago
Wow harsh newsletter sign up pop up. That's not cool.
draw_down 9y ago
I could never figure out what that site was supposed to be. I guess they couldn’t either.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Funny how everyone talks like Mashable lost to Techcrunch. Look up how much TC got acquired for, it's actually less than what Mashable got acquired for. What REALLY happened was not that Mashable failed. It's that the entire journalism sector failed. Mashable is just a good mascot and sacrificial lamb because it's actually one of the most well known ones. I say Mashable is a "mascot" because they represent exactly what's wrong with "journalism" nowadays. Instead of producing what people should read, they have shifted their focus onto: 1. What people will click (Memes, controversial topics, content about other people's misfortune) 2. What advertisers will pay more for (Video) It's understandable because it's been a while since "content" became commoditized. Now media sites no longer can differentiate themselves with content anymore and they can't figure out how to, so they just do what makes them money in the short term. This article also inevitably mentions Buzzfeed, which I think is what Mashable would have been if it didn't have to go through all the trial and error. Buzzfeed probably learned a lot from Mashable's mistakes and decided to go all in on "I don't care about quality, I'll give you what you want, just give us ad money". But those who've been following the media landscape also know that that model's not been working out either (It's a good thing that it's not). So my take is, they didn't flame out because of all these little reasons. They were just the symptoms. The real reason was because they have lost their soul. It's not only Mashable that flamed out, it's that the entire media industry that is flaming out, and OP's own publication will probably flame out too, if they keep writing crap like this (I personally think all publications that monetize off of someone else's misfortunes deserve to taste their own drug and die off too) Oh, by the way, this is nothing new, and is definitely not just because of the Internet. If you read up on the history of the media itself, you'll realize this type of pendulum swing between "quality content" vs. "shallow, give people what they want in exchange for revenue" approaches have existed several times already.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  To be fair Buzzfeed takes a portfolio approach. One part makes all the money, which funds legitimate journalism (ex: their zenefits investigation)
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
tryingagainbro 9y ago
>>At its peak, the company had more than 300 people and was in seven countries, including the U.K., India and Australia. They could have been very successful but I guess wanted to become a unicorn...
Tomsredwagon 9y ago
They failed because they increasingly took a political tone and pressed on alienating everyone center to right. You can't lose 50% of the possible audience and continue on.
- inthewoods 9y ago
  Do you have a source for 50% of their traffic going away and that this was driven by center/right people leaving?
- geofft 9y ago
  > You can't lose 50% of the possible audience and continue on. I don't know that I believe this. Isn't it standard advice to go with a product that 50% of the market is excited about instead of one that 100% is indifferent about? Aren't Breitbart and Fox News doing very well for themselves alienating the other 50% of the audience?
strictnein 9y ago
I just remember when they used to cover API mashups. Like this: http://mashable.com/2009/10/08/top-mashups/ http://mashable.com/2009/10/08/top-mashups/ That's where the name came from. Used to visit them a lot in those days.
reiichiroh 9y ago
Most properties that get bought up by Ziff Davis just sort of go there to die, don't they?
inthewoods 9y ago
I think the reason they failed is because there is a disconnect between a media site and VC funding. VC funding means scaling - and media is challenged to do that and do it consistently. Some businesses just aren't geared for VC funding. There are naturally examples in media that show it can sometimes work, but that's the exception rather than the rule in my opinion.
Hekvision 9y ago
Our results suggest that it is climate change, through the effect it had on the vegetation, which caused the reduction of the population and the ultimate extinction of mammoths and other large herbivores," he said. Professor Huntley and his colleagues created a computer simulation of vegetation in Europe, Asia and North America over the past 42,000 years. To do this, they combined estimates of how the climate was in this period with models of how different vegetations grew in different conditions. And they found that cold and dry conditions during the ice age, with low concentrations of carbon dioxide, did not favor the growth of trees. So instead of forests there were immense areas of grass, which were ideal for large herbivores, such as woolly mammoths. As a result of a more temperate and humid climate, and the increase of carbon dioxide at the end of the ice age, trees emerged at the expense of large areas of pasture. "At the height of the ice age, mammoths and other large herbivores would have had more food to feed on," Huntley explained. "But as we move into the post-glacial era, the trees displaced the herbaceous ecosystems and significantly reduced the pasture area," he concluded.

59 points by prawn 9y ago

There's a remarkable amount of entitlement in that article. Spoiler alert: lots and lots of hard-working, promising startups don't become unicorns. Lots just die, many just slowly stagnate, a few achieve a decent niche and are perfectly happy with it. There's no automatic entitlement to be a Buzzfeed just because you worked hard and were there at the start.

m4tthumphrey 9y ago

I have to say I'm happy Mashable failed. I used to visit Mashable regularly. 95% of my visits would originate from Facebook; mainly memes, click bait and other time wasters but it got me through the boring times at work or on the toilet. They always had ads but never enough to annoy me or get in the way. The years went on and then I started to notice the ad technique of displaying lists as a slideshow on multiple "pages". Followed by the modal popups "Sign up to our newsletter" on every visit. Followed by the site simply not functioning on a mobile. I even tweeted about that one, [0] which incidentally was my last tweet about them (and probably the last time I visited them). [0] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Am4tthumphrey%20mashable&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Am4tthumphrey%20mashable&...

gorbachev 9y ago

"10 reasons why..." That's why they failed.

nasredin 9y ago
Are you sure it's not because of "this one weird trick..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements

spchampion2 9y ago

There was a period for me around 2008 where Mashable was one of my go-to sites for tech news. It was like a more fun, less grumpy version of TechCrunch. And then over time I read it less and less, until one day I realized that my Facebook feed was a good 60% non-tech click bait posts from Mashable. I unliked their page, and that was the end of my relationship with them. The problem was that I think they were always a bit me too in their coverage from the start. Even in their tech news days, they were never quite on top of startup news like TechCrunch. It's not a surprise that they also got lost chasing after BuzzFeed as well.

mtgx 9y ago
TheVerge has been following down that path for a while, too, ever since they decided they need to follow "tech pop culture" or something. I used to be daily on that site, now it's more like whenever I randomly see one of their popular posts on Reddit (which is rather rare these days).
- arbie 9y ago
  Agreed. "This Is My Next" had more quality articles in its short run than The Verge has had in any given month.

kennydude 9y ago

Wow harsh newsletter sign up pop up. That's not cool.

draw_down 9y ago

I could never figure out what that site was supposed to be. I guess they couldn’t either.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

Funny how everyone talks like Mashable lost to Techcrunch. Look up how much TC got acquired for, it's actually less than what Mashable got acquired for. What REALLY happened was not that Mashable failed. It's that the entire journalism sector failed. Mashable is just a good mascot and sacrificial lamb because it's actually one of the most well known ones. I say Mashable is a "mascot" because they represent exactly what's wrong with "journalism" nowadays. Instead of producing what people should read, they have shifted their focus onto: 1. What people will click (Memes, controversial topics, content about other people's misfortune) 2. What advertisers will pay more for (Video) It's understandable because it's been a while since "content" became commoditized. Now media sites no longer can differentiate themselves with content anymore and they can't figure out how to, so they just do what makes them money in the short term. This article also inevitably mentions Buzzfeed, which I think is what Mashable would have been if it didn't have to go through all the trial and error. Buzzfeed probably learned a lot from Mashable's mistakes and decided to go all in on "I don't care about quality, I'll give you what you want, just give us ad money". But those who've been following the media landscape also know that that model's not been working out either (It's a good thing that it's not). So my take is, they didn't flame out because of all these little reasons. They were just the symptoms. The real reason was because they have lost their soul. It's not only Mashable that flamed out, it's that the entire media industry that is flaming out, and OP's own publication will probably flame out too, if they keep writing crap like this (I personally think all publications that monetize off of someone else's misfortunes deserve to taste their own drug and die off too) Oh, by the way, this is nothing new, and is definitely not just because of the Internet. If you read up on the history of the media itself, you'll realize this type of pendulum swing between "quality content" vs. "shallow, give people what they want in exchange for revenue" approaches have existed several times already.

hkmurakami 9y ago
To be fair Buzzfeed takes a portfolio approach. One part makes all the money, which funds legitimate journalism (ex: their zenefits investigation)
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

tryingagainbro 9y ago

>>At its peak, the company had more than 300 people and was in seven countries, including the U.K., India and Australia. They could have been very successful but I guess wanted to become a unicorn...

Tomsredwagon 9y ago

They failed because they increasingly took a political tone and pressed on alienating everyone center to right. You can't lose 50% of the possible audience and continue on.

inthewoods 9y ago
Do you have a source for 50% of their traffic going away and that this was driven by center/right people leaving?
geofft 9y ago
> You can't lose 50% of the possible audience and continue on. I don't know that I believe this. Isn't it standard advice to go with a product that 50% of the market is excited about instead of one that 100% is indifferent about? Aren't Breitbart and Fox News doing very well for themselves alienating the other 50% of the audience?

strictnein 9y ago

I just remember when they used to cover API mashups. Like this: http://mashable.com/2009/10/08/top-mashups/ http://mashable.com/2009/10/08/top-mashups/ That's where the name came from. Used to visit them a lot in those days.

reiichiroh 9y ago

Most properties that get bought up by Ziff Davis just sort of go there to die, don't they?

inthewoods 9y ago

I think the reason they failed is because there is a disconnect between a media site and VC funding. VC funding means scaling - and media is challenged to do that and do it consistently. Some businesses just aren't geared for VC funding. There are naturally examples in media that show it can sometimes work, but that's the exception rather than the rule in my opinion.

Hekvision 9y ago

Our results suggest that it is climate change, through the effect it had on the vegetation, which caused the reduction of the population and the ultimate extinction of mammoths and other large herbivores," he said. Professor Huntley and his colleagues created a computer simulation of vegetation in Europe, Asia and North America over the past 42,000 years. To do this, they combined estimates of how the climate was in this period with models of how different vegetations grew in different conditions. And they found that cold and dry conditions during the ice age, with low concentrations of carbon dioxide, did not favor the growth of trees. So instead of forests there were immense areas of grass, which were ideal for large herbivores, such as woolly mammoths. As a result of a more temperate and humid climate, and the increase of carbon dioxide at the end of the ice age, trees emerged at the expense of large areas of pasture. "At the height of the ice age, mammoths and other large herbivores would have had more food to feed on," Huntley explained. "But as we move into the post-glacial era, the trees displaced the herbaceous ecosystems and significantly reduced the pasture area," he concluded.