Wed Apr 10, 2019 12:38 am
It's a pity to see all the old school tech sites in such decline. They have all been such great resources over the years but times have changed. I've certainly noticed changes in my own browsing habits over time. I think largely the need for such detailed benchmarks has waned because of technology becoming so commoditized, technology has sort of plateaued to a bit of a sweet spot where maintstream stuff is pretty good, and there are diminishing returns in the improvements brought by new generations of products. I don't find myself wanting to learn all the nit picky details over every product launch anymore, except maybe the big generation changes like major GPU / CPU releases. The rate of new hardware releases for tech is still very high but each one seems to be less noteworthy than in the past. Back in the day there were more differences between brands and products and generations, these days cards are based off reference designs and a lot of the product innovation has been done, so even for cases, coolers and other related bits and pieces there's just less new interesting stuff happening overall, or maybe we are just so used to seeing rapid change it's not that surprising anymore.
My main reason for visiting tech sites these days is to just keep up with general news and happenings, to answer questions like "when are new OLED monitors going to be available?", or other anticipated major innovations. To hear of major shifts in technology, or the stand out products and trends. Or for looking up reviews to understand which product is currently best in class, or if there are several similar competing products which are the best options, and their ups and downs. I rarely read very much detail about product architecture or technicalities anymore, I just look for an easy summary, and a heads up over any potential gotchas. Don't get me wrong, I still do try to understand what is the best thing for my needs, and what is best out of currently available products, but I definitely spend less time reading the deep technical writeups that TR is known for, not because their quality has changed, but just the overall market has changed, and probably to a point my own personal interests have changed. Younger readers are also probably less common, since the starting point for technology has changed.. a lot of stuff is probably taken for granted these days.
We seem to be living in a sort of race to the bottom environment where clickbaity content like Linus seems to be successful, where it really shouldn't be (it's a great pity that something like that is more successful than quality content like TR). But I guess we have to remember that TR readers are a tiny minority of the population who are already clued up much more than most would be regarding tech, so the click baity stuff just comes across as transparent and tacky to us, whereas for most people its like a sparkling fish hook that catches their attention. Personally I find video review is an annoying format because it's much harder to skim through, unless a video has been indexed well with timestamps for key info. I find video is more suited as a complimentary extension to the written form, but it varies between products. Some things are more tactile / aesthetic and a visual review is essential to get a good understanding, e.g. stuff like computer cases. Whereas CPU and GPU reviews, sure an overview of the layout / cooling is useful but generally performance data / text is a more concise way to cover the info.
It's a very challenging situation for a site like TR to be in, since to be competitive you essentially have to be ahead of the curve in some way. e.g. providing greater insight on products, or somehow have a better lead on breaking news, trends and tech.. Which is easier said than done in todays environment when other sites will just end up repeating your news / articles soon after posting. It's very hard to have a reason for visitors to favour your site / content over the many other channels of tech news coverage out there. I don't really have any great ideas on what to do, I assume if there were easy answers sites like [H] wouldn't be winding up mothballed. In the meantime I guess the safest approach would be to hedge bets, and try to drive in some new traffic through mediums like video, which seems to be very popular with the masses. Though it doesn't have to replace TRs in depth content on the important product releases. Hopefully some kind of workable balance can be found.
