News: Purch (people behind Tom's Hardware) just bought Anandtech

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Biren78

Active Member
Jan 16, 2013
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I read 3 authors at Anandtech and only you on Tom's. This sucks. Many on my team at work feel the same way.
 

Pri

Active Member
Jul 30, 2014
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This doesn't feel like a good thing to me. I used to be an avid reader of Toms Hardware until they got bought out then the site went to shit.
 

mackle

Active Member
Nov 13, 2013
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The site's sale is not hugely surprising given Anand's move to Apple. One could see the sale as the logical next step, as at the time of his move a lot of people made noise about his ownership of the site while working for Apple...

Whether there is any change in the running of the outfit remains to be seen though, I know Tom's has continually gotten worse and worse.
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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In other news... The need for independent news outlets like STH has increased. Just need some more writers to step up.
 

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
616
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In other news... The need for independent news outlets like STH has increased. Just need some more writers to step up.
Every once in a while I think about getting back into tech news again. Then I remember that I like technology but hate writing.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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So I had e-mails from some of the AT folks today. Personally, I think content will be similar. Ads will be more.

And STH always (desperately) needs writers.
 
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HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
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Tom's went down hill very quickly when Tom left. Anandtech has been on a downwards slope for a long time, and I think this buyout has probably cut the brake lines.
 

uOpt

Member
Dec 12, 2014
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Boston, MA, USA
I don't like this at all. I don't really care about their articles that much, but I am very concerned about what is happening with discussion forums on the Internet. This isn't limited to computer forums. The popular forums are concentrated in the hands of few organizations owning many forums. While the individual forums keep their flavor on the surface they are still subject to the same rules (often undisclosed) about what kind of thing will just disappear silently when posted.

Too bad that the FTC looks at too large mergers by market share for normal good, but market share by forum isn't on their radar.
 
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Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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I don't like this at all. I don't really care about their articles that much, but I am very concerned about what is happening with discussion forums on the Internet. This isn't limited to computer forums. The popular forums are concentrated in the hands of few organizations owning many forums. While the individual forums keep their flavor on the surface they are still subject to the same rules (often undisclosed) about what kind of thing will just disappear silently when posted.

Too bad that the FTC looks at too large mergers by market share for normal good, but market share by forum isn't on their radar.
Too fragmented of a market. Too many alternatives. Easy to make another on any topic. No need for the FTC.
 

spazoid

Member
Apr 26, 2011
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Anandtech isn't about being first with a rewrite of a press release, it's about in-depth analysis and perspective of said press release, which requires time.
It's also about in-depth articles that doesn't just run 3dmark on whatever hardware OEM's decide to distribute to reviewers, but offers actual insight at a very high level about a lot of different things like manufacturing, technology behind the products, why a company made a decision that the public might not easily understand and so on. This is why I keep coming back to the site, and as long as they keep doing this, I don't care who owns them. I can just block the ads.
 

Pri

Active Member
Jul 30, 2014
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Anandtech isn't about being first with a rewrite of a press release, it's about in-depth analysis and perspective of said press release, which requires time.
It's also about in-depth articles that doesn't just run 3dmark on whatever hardware OEM's decide to distribute to reviewers, but offers actual insight at a very high level about a lot of different things like manufacturing, technology behind the products, why a company made a decision that the public might not easily understand and so on. This is why I keep coming back to the site, and as long as they keep doing this, I don't care who owns them. I can just block the ads.
I don't know if you visited Toms Hardware before they got bought out but it used to be what Anandtech is now. They did great in-depth reviews, great articles on latest technology and they also did videos in a similar vein to what Anandtech does right now. I'm sure we've all seen the heatsink removal test video Toms did and the liquid nitrogen videos. We're talking <2007 here

After they got bought out the entire website went to crap. The reviews were no longer in-depth, the video content dried up, articles were just click-bait, the layout of the site completely changed and it no longer looked nice or was easy to browse. It just became a cluttered husk of titles all over the place, a shotgun approach of "we must have SOMETHING you wanna read".

And one of the most annoying things they did was break articles/reviews into smaller chunks to spread it across more pages. So instead of a 12 page review it's now 24 pages but the content hasn't changed, it's just each page is cut in half and spread out so they can get more page impressions which results in higher ad revenue.

Now I'm not blaming Purch for this. They've only owned the site for about a year, Toms Hardware has changed hands about 3 or 4 times since the original 2007 buy out but looking at the site today it doesn't look any different to what it did two or three years ago and I'm afraid they are going to ruin Anandtech which is a site I visit daily and love.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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And one of the most annoying things they did was break articles/reviews into smaller chunks to spread it across more pages. So instead of a 12 page review it's now 24 pages but the content hasn't changed, it's just each page is cut in half and spread out so they can get more page impressions which results in higher ad revenue.
So the really interesting thing here is that people generally read the first and last pages only. The middle pages are lucky to see 10% of visitors read through them. This is Tom's, Anandtech and just about every other site I work with.

Hence why I try to keep everything on STH down to 1 page. Horrible from a business perspective, but then again, there are no full page landing page ads and etc on STH either. Good thing I have a day job to subsidize STH.
 

Pri

Active Member
Jul 30, 2014
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If I was you Patrick I would add a paid membership to the site where if we pay (say $30 a year) it removes the ads from the website and gave us a supporter title in the forums. That has worked well in the past on other forums I've been a member of and users are often very happy to support the sites they love.
 
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Patrick

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Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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If I was you Patrick I would add a paid membership to the site where if we pay (say $30 a year) it removes the ads from the website and gave us a supporter title in the forums. That has worked well in the past on other forums I've been a member of and users are often very happy to support the sites they love.
Heh, the forums have 2 Google ads/ page and the main site I do not allow non-authors to login (keeps that much simpler.) I doubt anyone would pay $30/ year to have the two Google ads removed for STH's forums.