7 ms·

Forbes as a whole basically sold its soul for clicks. It used to be one of the three top business magazines depending on your preferences. After the web became

by ghaff 2y ago

Forbes as a whole basically sold its soul for clicks. It used to be one of the three top business magazines depending on your preferences. After the web became dominant, at some point after Malcolm Forbes died, you ended up with a ton of blog writers--with plenty of biases and axes to grind--and essentially advertorial content.

paulpauper 2y ago
fortune.com too. same thing . these brands realized they can cash in on their domain authority to create content farms full of ads. scales really well too
- ghaff 2y ago
  Fortune's case was mostly the whole Time-Life magazine empire going to the dogs partly by way of TWB. Forbes just kind of faded away post-Malcolm (and with a distracted Steven Forbes). But, in general, the magazine and journalism businesses aren't what they were so most of the relatively mass market magazines pretty much cashed in on their brands to the degree their owners decided to keep them around.
roughly 2y ago
Bit of a microcosm of the entire business world nowadays. Forbes made something - a magazine that produced enough good content to gain a reputation. In the new school of business, that's an asset, and assets are things we turn into cash as quickly as possible, so now Forbes sells CBD, and now anyone who sees "forbes.com" in the URL knows it's useless crap, but hey, someone made some money, and now they can go find the next thing to flip for a couple bucks.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  I was talking to a friend about this recently. I bought a pair of Doc Martens boots a while back. And they're shit. I remember them from the 80's and they were really solid, good leather, well made, etc. The modern ones are crappy leather and fell apart after only a few months. But they still cost a decent amount because they're Doc Martens. My friend pointed out that Doc Martens are primarily worn by teenage girls these days, and are almost "fast fashion". My expectations based on the brand are not matching with reality, because the brand has moved on from being the de rigeur footwear for the entire 80's alternative scene. From this, I have come up with the "reverse Vimes" theory of boots. That actually the most cash-efficient approach to footwear is to buy cheap K-mart shoes, expecting them to last for a year, instead of buying expensive branded shoes which are actually made just as badly as the cheap ones and still only last a year. The point being that Doc Martens, like Forbes, are trading in their reputation for quality. In ten years time they will be known as shitty boots that used to be worn by edgy teenage girls, and the brand will be worthless. But the shareholders will have made significant bank from the destruction of that brand. Late-stage capitalism win, I guess.
  - senkora 2y ago
    I think that the trick is to try to find new and upcoming brands that have a reputation for quality, and learn what high quality looks like so that you can confirm personally that the product is good. This is difficult and requires ongoing work. Fashionable young people tend to do it but I certainly don’t blame anyone who decides that it isn’t worth the effort.
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      This used to be what brand was all about - that you could trust the brand to produce high-quality stuff because it was a quality brand. All Doc Marten boots were well-made and solid, would last a decade at least, because it was a quality brand and the price tag came with that. I know what high quality looks like; I wore my first Doc Martens for a decade. I trusted the brand when revisiting my youth and buying a new pair. It seems someone figured out that the price tag goes with the brand, not the quality. So you can charge high prices for cheap boots if you put the DM tag on them. And make bank. I think this will accelerate, and the "new and upcoming" brands will get shit at exactly the point where people like me discover them. Because, as you say, it's not worth the effort to keep up with this rapid churn. Hence the Inverse Vimes solution: stop trying to buy quality and instead accept that everything is shit and deal with that reality; buy cheap and often.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        I prefer the Costco solution 90% of the time. If and when the Costco solution does not work, then I do the research to figure out what might be better. For example, I like to wear $30 Costco shoes. I can usually get at least a year out of them, but even if not, they’re only $30. I can buy 3 in a year and come out ahead. And I don’t waste time researching shoes.
      - ZephyrBlu 2y ago
        This is only a problem with really big and popular brands, where they leverage their brand at scale to generate more revenue. You can find smaller brands that have been doing high quality stuff for a while, and they're unlikely to blow up in popularity or to reduce quality. Docs are not my style so I don't know a good small brand that does boots like that, but I like Buttero, Crown Northhampton and John Elliott for boots/shoes. Beckett Simonon is a good brand for more formal shoes. Morjas is another brand for more formal shoes that looks really good, though I haven't bought anything from them yet.
bongodongobob 2y ago
Well what did you expect them to do? Magazine subscriptions fell off a cliff as the Internet matured and no one wants to pay for online content.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Some magazines have been able to maintain quality better than others. Especially if there was outside funding from someone who had a real connection/passion. I'm not sure there was anyone at the helm of Forbes who cared at that point.
- smcin 2y ago
  Consumer reports that you pay for, or at least websites that have a policy of avoiding or declaring conflicts-of-interest, seem to be the reasonable middle-ground.
  - hakfoo 2y ago
    I noticed recently actually seeing "Consumer Reports Best Buy" listed in ad copy for some products. For decades they were extremely assertive about not licensing that sort of stuff out, to the point where advertisers used to say "A leading consumer magazine" if they wanted to hint about that.
    - smcin 2y ago
      I don't understand you, the term "Consumer Reports Best Buy" has been in use since at least 2004, which implies CR permitted the term to be used. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%22Consumer%20Reports%20Best%20Buy%22&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago
  Not to become villains and scammers, obviously. That's the bare minimum of what you should not become no matter how bad your business is going.
somethoughts 2y ago
It's a really good example of why one should not name your company after your surname. At some point if you sell your company, you are putting the surname of all your descendants in the hands of some other entity outside of your/their direct control.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  If they really care about it they can just change their name though.
  - ackbar03 2y ago
    The Forbes family tree or the publication?
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      The family. They'd be far from the first ones to have the actions of their forebears damage their family name.
- jm20 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of things the Forbes family is still perfectly OK with the association
  - FatalLogic 2y ago
    >I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of things the Forbes family is still perfectly OK with the association The writers, editors and other business partners who built their reputation by contributing to Forbes previous good reputation are probably very not OK with it
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      The question was whether to name it after a person or not. Those people would be equally upset if it was named Bisclock, so them being upset at the current site is not relevant to the naming discussion.
rgovostes 2y ago
One of the Forbes "contributors", Gordon Kelly, used to generate an enormous volume of posts for every single minor Apple software release, in addition to regurgitating every rumor published by Mark Gurman and other journalists. Apparently he passed away last year, after "authoring 2,511 articles in sum and accumulating over 174 million page views in just one year, 33 million of which were gained within a single month." https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2023/10/05/tribute-to-gordon-kelly-superstar-forbes-contributor-and-tech-guru/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2023/10/05/tribute...
- underlipton 2y ago
  Apple-focused journalists have historically been especially egregious. Nilay Patel and Josh Topolsky took their maddening approach of covering the Engadget homepage in inane, separate articles for every minute detail of a product announcement (starting with the iPad) to The Verge, and its "success" caused the strategy to propagate onward. No more concise write-ups; it's all about keeping you in a deathloop on the platform. Gotta milk those cult clicks, you know.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Certain topics, and Apple is certainly one of them, can be essentially guaranteed to generate a ton of traffic. HN is by no means immune. And some writers have made a career of taking advantage of that fact. Meanwhile, a founder of one of the major 80s-era minicomputer companies that even had a book written about them passed away a few weeks ago and I would have not even known except for my Facebook groups.
    - bartekpacia 2y ago
      What person do you have in mind?
      - ghaff 2y ago
        Edson de Castro (Data General as in Soul of a New Machine). But you could name just about any luminary from important commercial computer companies from that era and it would be the same story. The computer industry just wasn't in the public spotlight at that time.
specialist 2y ago
Maximizing engagement is antithetical to rational discourse. Apropos of nothing: NYT's subscriptions transistioned from ~0.5m print to 10m digital. (More or less.)

by ghaff 2y ago

paulpauper 2y ago

fortune.com too. same thing . these brands realized they can cash in on their domain authority to create content farms full of ads. scales really well too

ghaff 2y ago
Fortune's case was mostly the whole Time-Life magazine empire going to the dogs partly by way of TWB. Forbes just kind of faded away post-Malcolm (and with a distracted Steven Forbes). But, in general, the magazine and journalism businesses aren't what they were so most of the relatively mass market magazines pretty much cashed in on their brands to the degree their owners decided to keep them around.

roughly 2y ago

Bit of a microcosm of the entire business world nowadays. Forbes made something - a magazine that produced enough good content to gain a reputation. In the new school of business, that's an asset, and assets are things we turn into cash as quickly as possible, so now Forbes sells CBD, and now anyone who sees "forbes.com" in the URL knows it's useless crap, but hey, someone made some money, and now they can go find the next thing to flip for a couple bucks.

marcus_holmes 2y ago
I was talking to a friend about this recently. I bought a pair of Doc Martens boots a while back. And they're shit. I remember them from the 80's and they were really solid, good leather, well made, etc. The modern ones are crappy leather and fell apart after only a few months. But they still cost a decent amount because they're Doc Martens. My friend pointed out that Doc Martens are primarily worn by teenage girls these days, and are almost "fast fashion". My expectations based on the brand are not matching with reality, because the brand has moved on from being the de rigeur footwear for the entire 80's alternative scene. From this, I have come up with the "reverse Vimes" theory of boots. That actually the most cash-efficient approach to footwear is to buy cheap K-mart shoes, expecting them to last for a year, instead of buying expensive branded shoes which are actually made just as badly as the cheap ones and still only last a year. The point being that Doc Martens, like Forbes, are trading in their reputation for quality. In ten years time they will be known as shitty boots that used to be worn by edgy teenage girls, and the brand will be worthless. But the shareholders will have made significant bank from the destruction of that brand. Late-stage capitalism win, I guess.
- senkora 2y ago
  I think that the trick is to try to find new and upcoming brands that have a reputation for quality, and learn what high quality looks like so that you can confirm personally that the product is good. This is difficult and requires ongoing work. Fashionable young people tend to do it but I certainly don’t blame anyone who decides that it isn’t worth the effort.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    This used to be what brand was all about - that you could trust the brand to produce high-quality stuff because it was a quality brand. All Doc Marten boots were well-made and solid, would last a decade at least, because it was a quality brand and the price tag came with that. I know what high quality looks like; I wore my first Doc Martens for a decade. I trusted the brand when revisiting my youth and buying a new pair. It seems someone figured out that the price tag goes with the brand, not the quality. So you can charge high prices for cheap boots if you put the DM tag on them. And make bank. I think this will accelerate, and the "new and upcoming" brands will get shit at exactly the point where people like me discover them. Because, as you say, it's not worth the effort to keep up with this rapid churn. Hence the Inverse Vimes solution: stop trying to buy quality and instead accept that everything is shit and deal with that reality; buy cheap and often.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      I prefer the Costco solution 90% of the time. If and when the Costco solution does not work, then I do the research to figure out what might be better. For example, I like to wear $30 Costco shoes. I can usually get at least a year out of them, but even if not, they’re only $30. I can buy 3 in a year and come out ahead. And I don’t waste time researching shoes.
    - ZephyrBlu 2y ago
      This is only a problem with really big and popular brands, where they leverage their brand at scale to generate more revenue. You can find smaller brands that have been doing high quality stuff for a while, and they're unlikely to blow up in popularity or to reduce quality. Docs are not my style so I don't know a good small brand that does boots like that, but I like Buttero, Crown Northhampton and John Elliott for boots/shoes. Beckett Simonon is a good brand for more formal shoes. Morjas is another brand for more formal shoes that looks really good, though I haven't bought anything from them yet.

bongodongobob 2y ago

Well what did you expect them to do? Magazine subscriptions fell off a cliff as the Internet matured and no one wants to pay for online content.

ghaff 2y ago
Some magazines have been able to maintain quality better than others. Especially if there was outside funding from someone who had a real connection/passion. I'm not sure there was anyone at the helm of Forbes who cared at that point.
smcin 2y ago
Consumer reports that you pay for, or at least websites that have a policy of avoiding or declaring conflicts-of-interest, seem to be the reasonable middle-ground.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  I noticed recently actually seeing "Consumer Reports Best Buy" listed in ad copy for some products. For decades they were extremely assertive about not licensing that sort of stuff out, to the point where advertisers used to say "A leading consumer magazine" if they wanted to hint about that.
  - smcin 2y ago
    I don't understand you, the term "Consumer Reports Best Buy" has been in use since at least 2004, which implies CR permitted the term to be used. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%22Consumer%20Reports%20Best%20Buy%22&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
Not to become villains and scammers, obviously. That's the bare minimum of what you should not become no matter how bad your business is going.

somethoughts 2y ago

It's a really good example of why one should not name your company after your surname. At some point if you sell your company, you are putting the surname of all your descendants in the hands of some other entity outside of your/their direct control.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
If they really care about it they can just change their name though.
- ackbar03 2y ago
  The Forbes family tree or the publication?
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    The family. They'd be far from the first ones to have the actions of their forebears damage their family name.
jm20 2y ago
I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of things the Forbes family is still perfectly OK with the association
- FatalLogic 2y ago
  >I’m pretty sure in the grand scheme of things the Forbes family is still perfectly OK with the association The writers, editors and other business partners who built their reputation by contributing to Forbes previous good reputation are probably very not OK with it
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    The question was whether to name it after a person or not. Those people would be equally upset if it was named Bisclock, so them being upset at the current site is not relevant to the naming discussion.

rgovostes 2y ago

One of the Forbes "contributors", Gordon Kelly, used to generate an enormous volume of posts for every single minor Apple software release, in addition to regurgitating every rumor published by Mark Gurman and other journalists. Apparently he passed away last year, after "authoring 2,511 articles in sum and accumulating over 174 million page views in just one year, 33 million of which were gained within a single month." https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2023/10/05/tribute-to-gordon-kelly-superstar-forbes-contributor-and-tech-guru/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmonckton/2023/10/05/tribute...

underlipton 2y ago
Apple-focused journalists have historically been especially egregious. Nilay Patel and Josh Topolsky took their maddening approach of covering the Engadget homepage in inane, separate articles for every minute detail of a product announcement (starting with the iPad) to The Verge, and its "success" caused the strategy to propagate onward. No more concise write-ups; it's all about keeping you in a deathloop on the platform. Gotta milk those cult clicks, you know.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Certain topics, and Apple is certainly one of them, can be essentially guaranteed to generate a ton of traffic. HN is by no means immune. And some writers have made a career of taking advantage of that fact. Meanwhile, a founder of one of the major 80s-era minicomputer companies that even had a book written about them passed away a few weeks ago and I would have not even known except for my Facebook groups.
  - bartekpacia 2y ago
    What person do you have in mind?
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Edson de Castro (Data General as in Soul of a New Machine). But you could name just about any luminary from important commercial computer companies from that era and it would be the same story. The computer industry just wasn't in the public spotlight at that time.

specialist 2y ago

Maximizing engagement is antithetical to rational discourse. Apropos of nothing: NYT's subscriptions transistioned from ~0.5m print to 10m digital. (More or less.)