5 ms·

A Business Insider retrospective

142 points by jakewalker 15y ago

resnamen 15y ago
I really resent the degree to which companies like AOL, Gawker, and BI punch up their headlines for maximum effect. It's exhausting to skim these headlines in my Google Reader feed, because the emotions they invoke diminish my mental signal-to-noise ratio dramatically.
- ethank 15y ago
  A tip: unsub from BI's twitter feed and RSS. You'll still get the news, and you'll feel better about it.
kenjackson 15y ago
Anyone else shocked to see HN providing 6x the hits over TechMeme?
- ethank 15y ago
  No. I rarely go to techmeme.com now and mostly click links through Twitter from the Techmeme firehose.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  No. Techmeme has become very biased lately in what kind of stories they put at the top, and sometimes their top stories stay there even for 24 hours, which gives little reason to come back to the site too often. It feels much slower than HN in the news they bring in.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    I have to admit I haven't noticed the bias. What is it?
- brandnewlow 15y ago
  Not at all. I love Techmeme, but which type of site do you think provides more utility: a) Tech news aggregator edited by journalists in an up-to-the-minute-fashion. b) Community hub for entrepreneurs, developers, and designers owned and operated by a startup incubator that can change your fortunes. Techmeme is a great, but niche site. HN is a force of nature and the front page of a movement to change how business happens.
brianwillis 15y ago
Have any of you seen any benefit from using a Creative Commons license for your writing? Has anyone seen anything positive come out of it? The licenses seem to appeal to our more idealistic side, valuing openness, transparency, and all that great free-as-in-speech stuff that so many hackers love. But if the end result is just a bunch of books and websites where the publisher doesn't have to pay the author then Creative Commons licensing is a pointless exercise.
- markmccraw 15y ago
  Given the permissiveness of fair use laws and the low probability that random bloggers will engage in costly and lengthy lawsuits, I imagine that CC license or not, Marco's stuff would get scraped.
  - RockyMcNuts 15y ago
    Bzzzzz. Wrong. 7 words, problem solved. Copyright (c) 2011 Marco Arment. All Rights Reserved. If that doesn't do it, a simple lawyer letter and public shaming certainly will. At least for sites with significant reach and assets/reputation worth losing.
    - markmccraw 15y ago
      If you go through the posts in the google link from marco's post, many of the scraped summaries are <2 paragraphs, (such as http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-02/strategy/30017428_1_programming-language-marco http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-02/strategy/3001...) and that would continue to happen regardless of licensure. The HuffPo which has both significant reach and assets, takes/quotes liberally from other writers and has had mixed responses to public shamings. See http://gawker.com/5820099 http://gawker.com/5820099 . I'm sure other aggregators do similar stuff, Newser comes to mind, although they tend to rewrite and condense, which may be better or worse, depending on the original writer's objectives.
      - RockyMcNuts 15y ago
stevenp 15y ago
Don't miss the tiny footnote at the bottom that mentions that they repeatedly spelled his name "Macro" and his website "Macro.org" in correspondence. These BI guys are truly a class act.
yannick 15y ago
I'm glad Marco wrote this piece. I've been a reader of BI but had no idea they employed these kinds of practices. It's incredibly misleading, frankly unethical, to post content like that and pretend like they're publishing with the author's consent. How disappointing.
- antr 15y ago
  I feel the same way. That is why after reading Marco's piece I (tried) unsubscribed from BI's daily Newsletter. "Shockingly" enough, when you click on Business Insider's unsubscribe link they send you to an inexistent website/404. Shameful
zeedotme 15y ago
oh the irony: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-business-insider-retrospective-marco-armentmarcoorg-2011-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-business-insider-retrospect...
- j_col 15y ago
  Oh wow, that's hilarious!
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
It seems that Marco's problem isn't that people are profiting off of his content; if that were the case he'd be using a more restrictive CC license. Rather his problem is that he doesn't like BI's design (nor do I, all of his complaints are spot-on). I wonder how he feels about all of the iPad apps that profit on Wikipedia content. Many of those are well designed; I bet he doesn't have a problem with those. I think Marco just needs to choose a different CC license. Personally I wouldn't allow BI or HuffPo to do this type of thing to my content.
nigham 15y ago
Looks like there's not enough news these days, so tech journalists dissing other tech journalists (Arrington-Swisher or Marco-BI) is what keeps the news sites going.

142 points by jakewalker 15y ago

I really resent the degree to which companies like AOL, Gawker, and BI punch up their headlines for maximum effect. It's exhausting to skim these headlines in my Google Reader feed, because the emotions they invoke diminish my mental signal-to-noise ratio dramatically.

ethank 15y ago
A tip: unsub from BI's twitter feed and RSS. You'll still get the news, and you'll feel better about it.

kenjackson 15y ago

Anyone else shocked to see HN providing 6x the hits over TechMeme?

ethank 15y ago
No. I rarely go to techmeme.com now and mostly click links through Twitter from the Techmeme firehose.
nextparadigms 15y ago
No. Techmeme has become very biased lately in what kind of stories they put at the top, and sometimes their top stories stay there even for 24 hours, which gives little reason to come back to the site too often. It feels much slower than HN in the news they bring in.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I have to admit I haven't noticed the bias. What is it?
brandnewlow 15y ago
Not at all. I love Techmeme, but which type of site do you think provides more utility: a) Tech news aggregator edited by journalists in an up-to-the-minute-fashion. b) Community hub for entrepreneurs, developers, and designers owned and operated by a startup incubator that can change your fortunes. Techmeme is a great, but niche site. HN is a force of nature and the front page of a movement to change how business happens.

brianwillis 15y ago

Have any of you seen any benefit from using a Creative Commons license for your writing? Has anyone seen anything positive come out of it? The licenses seem to appeal to our more idealistic side, valuing openness, transparency, and all that great free-as-in-speech stuff that so many hackers love. But if the end result is just a bunch of books and websites where the publisher doesn't have to pay the author then Creative Commons licensing is a pointless exercise.

markmccraw 15y ago
Given the permissiveness of fair use laws and the low probability that random bloggers will engage in costly and lengthy lawsuits, I imagine that CC license or not, Marco's stuff would get scraped.
- RockyMcNuts 15y ago
  Bzzzzz. Wrong. 7 words, problem solved. Copyright (c) 2011 Marco Arment. All Rights Reserved. If that doesn't do it, a simple lawyer letter and public shaming certainly will. At least for sites with significant reach and assets/reputation worth losing.
  - markmccraw 15y ago
    If you go through the posts in the google link from marco's post, many of the scraped summaries are <2 paragraphs, (such as http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-02/strategy/30017428_1_programming-language-marco http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-02/strategy/3001...) and that would continue to happen regardless of licensure. The HuffPo which has both significant reach and assets, takes/quotes liberally from other writers and has had mixed responses to public shamings. See http://gawker.com/5820099 http://gawker.com/5820099 . I'm sure other aggregators do similar stuff, Newser comes to mind, although they tend to rewrite and condense, which may be better or worse, depending on the original writer's objectives.
    - RockyMcNuts 15y ago

stevenp 15y ago

Don't miss the tiny footnote at the bottom that mentions that they repeatedly spelled his name "Macro" and his website "Macro.org" in correspondence. These BI guys are truly a class act.

yannick 15y ago

I'm glad Marco wrote this piece. I've been a reader of BI but had no idea they employed these kinds of practices. It's incredibly misleading, frankly unethical, to post content like that and pretend like they're publishing with the author's consent. How disappointing.

antr 15y ago
I feel the same way. That is why after reading Marco's piece I (tried) unsubscribed from BI's daily Newsletter. "Shockingly" enough, when you click on Business Insider's unsubscribe link they send you to an inexistent website/404. Shameful

zeedotme 15y ago

oh the irony: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-business-insider-retrospective-marco-armentmarcoorg-2011-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-business-insider-retrospect...

j_col 15y ago
Oh wow, that's hilarious!

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

It seems that Marco's problem isn't that people are profiting off of his content; if that were the case he'd be using a more restrictive CC license. Rather his problem is that he doesn't like BI's design (nor do I, all of his complaints are spot-on). I wonder how he feels about all of the iPad apps that profit on Wikipedia content. Many of those are well designed; I bet he doesn't have a problem with those. I think Marco just needs to choose a different CC license. Personally I wouldn't allow BI or HuffPo to do this type of thing to my content.

nigham 15y ago

Looks like there's not enough news these days, so tech journalists dissing other tech journalists (Arrington-Swisher or Marco-BI) is what keeps the news sites going.