Slashdot Mirror
LinuxWorld.com, UnixInsider To Close
A couple people noticed that NewsForge has a story running on the closure of LinuxWorld and UnixInsider, two of IDG's online efforts. Some of the efforts will live on in the parent ITWorld, but it's too bad to see them go.
Too many companies took too little time to research the pros and cons when coming on the Internet with site after site after site, of content based commercialized houses that who knows what they housed. (sounds odd but made sense when I thought about it)
Well take a look around at whats going down, do the math if you will before you post on with some rant which you understand nothing of. Lets go with "Benefit of the doubt Mathematics 101"
hosting for site colo, per month 10k
writers, content people, etc., lets say 10 employees 10k
hardware 2 Sun e450's, 10 VAR501's 60k
Promotion 600,000.00
Just for a small company, thats about 30k a month. Now look at the revenues these sites generated with "click me banners". Maybe 3000 here 4000 there, which means most companies lost on these schemes as we all no.
Its simple to sit back, watch and poke around and make fun at FuckedCompany.com, but the overabundance of these sites which flourished in the late 90's are what saturated the markets with overhyped products, sites, dreams and hopes.
For those who keep up with financial info, you would know NASDAQ is taking a beating left and right and things will continue as more investors become aware of the true facts: The world is not ready to be run solely on the Internet.
Us geeks could dream, wish, hope, ponder, attempt to make it a reality but when it all comes down on paper take a quick look... There is no paper when dealing with the net its all a big risk, something investors are not going to sit back and watch eat up their money without making a profit.
Companies should seriously start revamping their business models and turn conservative for a period of time and hope this wave dies out (which isn't likely for some time now).
This is sad news but should not come as a surprise to anyone.
Use my bandwidth till I'm on FuckedCompany.com... enjoy
I have never been to the summer one in Silicon Valley but there is a winter one in New York and it ROCKS!
This company that just went udner rents the javitis convention center for the expo and aranges the activities. Everyone including Eric Raymond to Alan Cox, to even Linus Trivolds attends these expo's. Even Rob Malda and Timothy from slashdot have there own booth complete with a rug, couch, bean bags, and a giant telivsion screen with slashdot on it, and annoying acccording music played by rob personally.
In other words THE EXPO'S ROCK!! Also I got lots and lots of free software. IBM db2, SCO unix ( shudder), ximian cd's, etc. I feel a strong community sense when I am there and IT journalists and analizers get more hyped up about LInux after they attend these expo's. I beleive the expo's have contributed to Linux's success after the years because journalists bring more hype about it and that brings in more users
I will be very sad without an expo this year. Is there anythinge can do?
Also it is rumoured that Microsoft bought %10 of the company that hosts the comidex under the condition that they ban Linux from the mainshow room and move it to somewhere else in the Las Vegas. Is this true?
Oh well, perhaps Redhat, IBM, and one with a few other vendors can form a non profit group to organzie them.
http://saveie6.com/
I enjoyed the first few months of LinuxWorld but honestly I can't say I'm surprised to see it go. Joe Barr is better suited to be a perpetual +1 Slashdot poster than a journalist, Nicholas Petreley sounds like a flack for Caldera and their message boards were generally deserted except for Mr. Barr picking flame wars with anyone who crossed his path.
I think the bottom line is that The Linux Revolution is over. Now it's just about people using it, improving it and making a living from it, without all the drooling hype.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
No more linuxworld conventions further prove my traffic theory. The lighter traffic on 680 is a combination of engineers being fired by the ten thousands, conventions terminating, and companies folding in.
Then when engineers start committing suicide the traffic gets heavier because they jump on the freeways.
Isn't this just part of the death of online advertiser supported content? The disappearance of such web sites is occurring in every field from gaming to writer's resources and beyond.
Given nobody has made subscription based content work, it looks like the web is going back to its roots with hobbyist-only content. The only problem with that is, if a site is any good, there'll be tens of thousands reading it, in which case the hobbyist goes bankrupt supplying bandwidth. At least in the old days, there just weren't that many people to serve.
Of course, we'll always have corporate sites, but it kind of diminishes the joy of the web. After all, not that many people are fascinated by the world's largest shopping mall.
I enjoyed LinuxWorld in particular, and will miss it. But this isn't particularly surprising, given the state of affairs at IDG.
The InfoWorld weekly just isn't what it used to be; Bob Metcalf's departure left a void (and I never thought I'd think that, let alone say it). They're getting more reader comments in response to smacks at religion than they are at insightful pieces on the industry.
IDG Books...er, Hungry Minds, is publishing Cliff's Notes and the computer equivalent...books for people who don't wanna know nothin'. Their logo change (to a flying pig, I kid you not) is beyond explanation.
Sure, Tim O'Reilly is a windbag, but at least his company has carved out a niche and mostly has the respect of its readers.
What's left of Bill Ziff's company is still churning out the typical combination of advertiser suck-up, bombast, and pertinent information.
MaximumLinux is gone, but its current incarnation is, in my opinion, better than ever.
The bottom line is that old-school publishing rules don't work well in the Internet space. I don't want to read advertising online. I worked for one of these publishers for years in the 90's, and I know how often people griped about the number of pages of advertising vs. editorial. Nothing has changed there, except that now the recipients are paying for the ad space in connection time.
Like the Linux kernel, Linux media sources that get their energy and input from people who are interested will continue to thrive. Those that follow a business plan co-opted from last decade's print media are doomed.
I guess I came to bury LinuxWorld.com, not to praise it. But I did like it while it lived.