

AOL To Lay Off 150 People, Mostly In Sales; Folding Joystiq, TUAW Into Engadget - uptown
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/30/aohell/

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kibwen
I was one of Joystiq's first employees, before its official launch in 2005. I
was a graduating high-school senior at the time, and in a bout of senioritis I
played hooky almost every day in order to hang out in the A/V room and surf
the internet reading video game news. I managed to find their fledgling site
somehow (this was well before "blog" was a household word) and sent in so damn
many exhaustively-written leads to their tip box that they eventually started
publishing them almost verbatim (with attribution, of course), and then soon
after cut out the middle man by hiring me outright. A great time of my life
during which I met a number of great people, though in retrospect I'm
incredibly embarrassed by the articles that my teenage brain managed to
produce. :P

And I'll still never forget the look on my mom's face when she came into my
room one night waving a $500 check from AOL. I had been told we were getting
bought out, but I was completely unaware that we'd all be getting bonuses!
That was the most money that I had ever had in my 17 year-old life... and
straight into the college fund it went. :)

~~~
samspot
I've been a big fan of Joystiq, but I stopped visiting regularly when Google
killed Reader. Guess I should have visited more often :(

~~~
decwakeboarder
Completely OT, but I've found Feedly to be a pretty decent online RSS reader.

~~~
thirdsun
Or Feedbin, or NewsBlur, Fever, ...

If you liked what Google Reader did, there are countless alternatives these
days. I went with Feedbin + Unread on iOS and it works just as flawless as
Google Reader did before.

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JohnTHaller
Penny Arcade's comic today comments on the fact that Joystiq itself was
reporting on rumors of its upcoming demise: [http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2015/01/30/godspeed](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2015/01/30/godspeed)

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danso
I'd go to TUAW just out of habit and because of its easy-to-type-URL, since it
had been around for a decade, but it seemed stagnant compared to the general
tech sites (engadget, gizmodo, verge) that, because of Apple's dominance,
themselves became blogs about Apple.

Still, that didn't mean there weren't good niches to nimbly carve out.
MacRumors Buyer's guide is, in my mind, one of the best examples of small
scale data collection put to powerful use (how hard would it be for anyone, if
they thought it out, to research all the release dates of Apple devices and
put them in a spreadsheet). And 9to5Mac.com is getting big scoops even though
its senior editor (who earns 6-figures a year, reportedly) is still in
college:
[http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/apple_mark_gurman_9to5mac...](http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/apple_mark_gurman_9to5mac.php?page=all)

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runj__
Looks like the people at The Verge did the right thing then, or maybe that's a
root cause.

On the other hand it looks like Polygon and The Verge are becoming more and
more like the same thing. Since Topolsky left there might be something
happening there as well.

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spike021
There are many times where I've noticed Verge and Polygon post articles on the
exact same topics and it doesn't make sense at all since Polygon was
originally meant to only be for game industry discussion.

~~~
Torgo
Polygon was interesting when it started, but then they stopped their deep
journalism pieces, adulterated the site with non-game content, and hired Ben
Kuchera :-(

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Karunamon
I dunno what happened with Ben - he was pretty enjoyable to read back at Ars
Technica, but in the meantime has become downright obnoxious.

~~~
Torgo
Ars had good editors.

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randall
:(

I used to work at Weblogs, Inc. and had done work for all three of these pubs.
The worst part for me is that the original vision of Weblogs, Inc. is dead.
The vision was to have dozens of niche blogs covering topics people cared
about. Sad.

~~~
rhino369
What is the value add of combining niche blogs into one "network"? Maybe the
ability to advertise for each other?

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slowernet
Economies of scale in sales, tech and business operations. Knowledge sharing,
eg. distribution and audience development techniques. Increased leverage with
3rd party vendors, search and social platforms, etc. Plus the usual benefits
of scale (cashflow stability etc.)

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jgv
What about Shingy?

~~~
smacktoward
They seem to still have enough money to keep paying him his six-figure salary.
So there's that.

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rpledge
Sad - no more WoW Insider either. I hope some of the niche blogs reemerge as
independent sites.

[http://wow.joystiq.com/2015/01/30/wow-insider-is-logging-
off...](http://wow.joystiq.com/2015/01/30/wow-insider-is-logging-off/)

~~~
madsushi
I wrote for WoW Insider for several years, and still keep in touch with the
writers there. I would recommend following Alex and Adam on Twitter for more
information on what (might) be coming after the official closure next week.

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spike021
I used to visit TUAW fairly often for very niche Apple news that none of the
major tech news sites would write about. But in the past few years I've
dropped it for 9to5mac because it just wasn't hitting the spot anymore.

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JonLim
Looks like Autoblog Canada bit the dust too, just a redirect to their main
Autoblog page.

Interesting, is there a full list of what's been affected, or did I just miss
it in TFA?

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arprocter
Link to TUAW is typo'd in the article. Correct address is
[http://www.tuaw.com/](http://www.tuaw.com/)

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arprocter
It has now been corrected, but thanks for the downvote

