A perfect example

‘This is a perfect example of go home and do it again… You know what I mean?‘
Not too long ago, I wrote about how Smashing Magazine and their business was kind of “destroying” the internet. Today I ran into the perfect example of what disgusts me the most. Take a look at this:

What you see here is a page of TheNextWeb magazine. And let me start by stating the following: I love that site. The content is relevant, relaxing and not too serious all the time. So I do like the philosophy of the site. But would you mind taking a look at that screenshot? The red square shows the actual content. Everything else can only be described as

1. Ads. Really. Advertisements. Hey… It’s okay. They gotta make money somehow, right?
2. Their own social profiles: They mention every single one of them at least 3 times on that page. I think they might have forgotten they put it there twice before…
3. Social sharing links: They want you to push their content as far into the web as possible, using any social service they can get their hands on.
4. Egotripping data: After you shared this article with every living soul on the planet, they tell you what you have done. A thousand diggs! A million retweets! And a billion RSS readers!!! This actually makes me wonder: Does anyone actually care?

Because that overall look of the page annoyed me so much, I made an effort and measured the whole thing up. This is what I came up with. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve said it for a long time, just didn’t quite make my point

I just finished reading an article on Drawar.com about how Smashing Magazine killed the community. I have been thinking about what you’re about to read for some time now but it never occurred to me that Smashing Magazine was one of the reasons why everything changed.

Let’s start in the beginning (because there’s a lot of things to cover here).
I’ve been reading Smashing Magazine for more than 2 years now. I started reading in their very early days as ‘Smashing Magazine’ (Before, it was a smaller online magazine with a different name).

They actually caught my eye with very very interesting articles that focussed on one topic. Every article covered ways to do things and things you shouldn’t do, in a very specific aspect of (web) design.  That content was of great value since it was on-topic and very high-end.
However Smashing Magazine’s content  not only caught my eye… Lots of people started reading it on a regular basis and subscribing to the RSS feeds. That’s when they really started making money, and therefor stopped actually writing ‘real’ articles and started going down the ‘lists‘ road. At that point, it only took me about 2 weeks to stop caring about Smashing Magazine (besides when they linked me). I still check the site every now and then, but honestly: If an article starts with a number I don’t even read the rest of the title. It’s all they’ve been doing ever since…

The worst part: Lots of other site have been doing it too, just because Smashing Magazine prove the concept works. I myself have only published 1 single post like that in the 2 years I’ve been blogging. And hell: I’m proud of it!
And the more I actually talk to other people about this issue, the more I realize the very people we write for think the same way. They don’t want a list of whatever. They want your secrets. They want to know why you did something the way you did it. They want to know why you prefer ketchup instead of mayonaise. They want a personal opinion. If they want a list, they’ll just Google whatever it is they need. Google lists everything by default anyway. Read the rest of this entry »