Hey Raging Thunderbolt!
Okay.
So Marco’s post is basically saying that big publishers are afraid of alienating large portions of their audience, so they try not to. Marco and Ben are happy to alienate most people, but, you’re saying, that’s not such a courageous stance to take because the infrastructure is in place for them to get by just fine doing so.
True!
I don’t have very strong feelings on this, matter, to be honest. I see value in both kinds of tech writing. I go to Marco if I want to know what he thinks is best. I go to something like The Verge if I want a broad overview of what’s available, like their recent camera buyer’s guide. I’m glad Savov lays it all out because everyone has different needs. But part of me is still curious which camera he uses, and why. But maybe that belongs on his personal blog.
I don’t care for the self-congratulating tone of Ben Brooks’s anti-The-Verge post1 but I did enjoy Marco’s “Fanboy Theory”.
Marco:
If given the choice between expressing an opinion and being useful, or pleasing most people most of the time by saying everything is great even when it isn’t, I’ll choose expressing an opinion every time. And if that results in derogatory feedback, so be it.
And I think that’s a fine mission statement for a personal blog. He’s not better or worse, his priorities are just different.
Raging Thunderbolt:
Moreover, I don’t think, as John Gruber and many others do, that advertising is inherently bad (at least when Google’s involved). In fact, I agree with you that it’s a fact of life.
I more or less agree with you here2. I don’t like looking at ads, but they grease a lot of wheels to vehicles I like riding in. I don’t care if an algorithm reads my email as long as a person doesn’t. And it’s probably a fair argument that Gruber is a bit hung up on making that “you are the product” point repeatedly. Especially, as Nick points out, Gruber makes his living running ads.
Maybe it’s an issue of scale. The way Gruber, Arment, Brooks, Benjamin, et al, run ads is sorta different from the way mega billion dollar company Google does it, and it would be kind of silly to confuse that.
(via ragingthunderbolt)
A Max Jacobson joint
