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The H Shuts Down

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-folks-did-good-work dept.

TexasDex writes "After years of providing great news reporting to the open source community, including interviews, great Linux kernel update summaries, and even breaking the Skype spying story well before it was leaked, The H Online is closing down due to lack of profitability. I've checked them daily for years, so it's sad to see them go."

54 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Never heard of them. by sproketboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess that was part of their problem. Too bad - it's a great resource.

    1. Re:Never heard of them. by cptnapalm · · Score: 1

      I was about to say exactly the same thing. Perhaps it is an effect of not advertising their own existence. Perhaps it is because there's too much competition already for a niche market.

    2. Re:Never heard of them. by lesincompetent · · Score: 1

      Yup, me too. I hope this article brings them some slashvertisement!

    3. Re:Never heard of them. by TWiTfan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm pretty tech savy, and follow a ton of tech news sites, and I never heard of them either.

      I guess you can't open source marketing.

      --
      The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    4. Re:Never heard of them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm a bit surprised so few people here know about them.
      I'm not even into open source that much, but they've been one of the very few decent tech news sites in the last years. I think I even found out about them through a link on Slashdot (or some other popular site).

      I have to wonder.. which tech news sites do you guys follow then? Most of the popular ones are just horrible, IMO. (Save some exceptions like Arstechnica or Anandtech which have some good content occasionally.)

    5. Re:Never heard of them. by Macrat · · Score: 1

      First I've ever heard of them also.

      When I saw the reference in tweets, I thought it was about some hotel in competition with W.

    6. Re:Never heard of them. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      That and the people who visited the site are so Anti-Capitalistic, they never clicked on an add.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    7. Re:Never heard of them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if I'd seen "The H" I would not have known what it was, so a more descriptive name would have helped.

    8. Re:Never heard of them. by 0racle · · Score: 1

      How can you say it was a great resource if you've never heard of them?

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    9. Re:Never heard of them. by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      If you've never heard of them, how can you state unequivocally that they were "a great resource"?

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    10. Re:Never heard of them. by TWiTfan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think maybe I could make a larger point here about how many open source projects are prone to picking fucking awful names (GIMP, I'm looking in you're direction). But it would only lead to a bunch of people listing bad names of proprietary products too, I suppose.

      --
      The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    11. Re:Never heard of them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I got one of their stories featured on Slashdot and it ended up in their list of most read stories, so I understand what you mean. They never found a way to transfer the success with their huge German following to their English offspring. The H wasn't as full-featured and didn't have the backing of the print publications that the German site has. It's a shame that most of you don't understand German well enough to just go to Heise Newsticker and get the combination of high quality journalism, commentary and playfulness delivered by people who clearly know and enjoy what they're doing. (Not affiliated with Heise in any way, just a big fan of their work.)

    12. Re:Never heard of them. by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Yes, they are,... were, one of the best sites for news. i can't believe people haven't heard of them

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    13. Re:Never heard of them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You don't have to be anti-capitalist to not click ads. I hate to say this, but there's a chance that web ads simply don't really work, regardless of the viewer's economic-political preferences. Noise is noise, and if your brain filters it out then it doesn't matter a damn bit what your conscious opinion is. On top of that, even rapid capitalists are probably going to assume that most web ads are scams, shit from the companies who are giving capitalism an unfairly-earned bad name. Capitalism can include viagra and malware, but it isn't really about viagra and malware, to the same extent that the web might say it is.

    14. Re:Never heard of them. by interval1066 · · Score: 2

      I know... another site i never heard of... not that I'm all that worldly but I check a number of online pubs and if I've not ever heard of their site perhaps there was a slight visibility problem.

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
    15. Re:Never heard of them. by interval1066 · · Score: 1

      ... they never clicked on an add.

      "ad". For some reason I'm annoyed by the uneducated today.

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
    16. Re:Never heard of them. by greg1104 · · Score: 2

      Publisher Heise is a popular and well regarded brand name for tech news in German. The English "The H" was trying to leverage their existing brand reputation. It didn't work out, but I can understand why they tried using that name to try. It's not as bad as the dubious reasoning behind some of the poorly chosen open source project names. (LibreOffice, I'm looking at you too)

    17. Re:Never heard of them. by jafac · · Score: 1

      I unblocked ads for them. There are few sites for whom I do that.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    18. Re:Never heard of them. by jafac · · Score: 1

      Best Hentai site evAr!

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    19. Re:Never heard of them. by sproketboy · · Score: 1

      Erm, cause I clicked the link and read some of the articles maybe?

  2. Until just now I had never heard of them by DigitalReverend · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No wonder profitability is down, you kind of have to get the word out that you exist.

    --
    I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
  3. Such a shame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The H was probably one of the best tech/security sites around.

    The writers and editors were well educated, rational and not prone to sensationalism like many others.
    There was no fanboism; just impartial, well written journalism. A real "News for Nerds" site.

    You'll be sorely missed, lads. Thanks for all the hard work.

    1. Re:Such a shame by fast+turtle · · Score: 1

      don't need another damn hafling anyway. Much rather have a giantling anyway - they can carry more stuff

      --
      Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
    2. Re:Such a shame by DuckDodgers · · Score: 1

      I never had a problem with it. It was a great site with well-written news articles.

      But a subscription model? How many news sites have made that work? Damn few, and for all of the other Linux and open source magazines and websites that folded, how would you expect something already having trouble reaching a wide audience to convince people to spend a monthly amount for their services?

    3. Re:Such a shame by DuckDodgers · · Score: 1

      Information wants people to stop anthropomorphizing it.

      I'll repeat my question: how many news websites have successfully built a funding model around subscriptions? Very few, and most that succeed are very well established names. I think a lesser known website is more likely to succeed through ad revenue than paid subscriptions - people are not likely to pay for content unless they know the content is high quality. They can't know the content is high quality if they have to pay before they access it.

      I supported the H Online by visiting the site with third party cookies enabled and no ad-blocker software running. That was my support. Evidently me and others like me were not enough to generate the ad revenue they needed.

  4. Not sure if... by agapeton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...truly shutting down or announcing a shutdown so the news will give free advertising.

  5. You should RTFA more often :) by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Their stories were posted on slashdot pretty regularly, at least weekly if I had to guess. I don't know how to search slashdot just for links in articles, but a general search brings up quite a few of them.

    1. Re:You should RTFA more often :) by cjjjer · · Score: 1

      That may be true but I must have never found a summary with a link in it interesting enough to click through.

    2. Re:You should RTFA more often :) by jafac · · Score: 1

      Slashdot is where I heard of them - and why I put them on my weekly reading-list.

      It sucks that they're going to most likely be replaced by outfits such as OMGUbuntu. :(

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  6. Sad to see them go by dwheeler · · Score: 1

    I'm really sad to see them go.

    I usually visit "The H" daily (along with sites like lwn.net, Slashdot, and Groklaw), because they had lots of interesting stuff.

    Sounds like a lot of people who would have liked them didn't know about them. I don't know if that would have helped with monetization, but it might have.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
    1. Re:Sad to see them go by NotBorg · · Score: 1

      I almost stopped reading at "Slashdot" but my peripheral vision glimpsed Groklaw so I continued reading. For a split millisecond, however...

      --
      I want this account deleted.
  7. Never heard of them either... by bi$hop · · Score: 1

    ...but its definitely be sad to see them go.

  8. So learn German by kju · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe that most of the stuff on H Online is also available through the newsticker of Heise (http://www.heise.de/newsticker) in German. Which should not be such a surprise considering that H Online is/was operated by Heise (their UK part in this case) as well.

    Heise is the publisher who publishes for example the well respected computer magazine c't in Germany.

    1. Re:So learn German by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's simply the English-speaking edition of of Heise Online, which is the online edition of c't and other magazines.

      They are pretty much THE standard news source for IT news in Germany. I don't think we geeks here in Germany would ever let them go down.
      In fact I had them subscribed, 10 years ago, when I still had money. And so did half of my colleagues.

      Being old-world "media", their business model / view is of course and unfortunately massively fucked-up. They think they can still make money from ads in a time of ad blockers, and even bitch about it regularly. And they think they can still tell us IT experts, that you can "own" information and "sell" news, instead of selling their *service*.
      At least you can still subscribe to them, which *is* a sensible business model for a pure service.

      I think they will fare well.

    2. Re:So learn German by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      If that is true, it seems amazing that they couldn't manage to translate existing articles profitably. You'd expect that to require perhaps one technically adept bilingual person. Their readership must have been very, very low.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:So learn German by Lproven · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is harder than you think.

      I am a former editor of heise-online.co.uk, the site that became the H.

      I *do* speak a little German - enough to read the headlines on the internal CMS and request translations of stuff that I thought would be interesting for English-speaking readers. Then the professionally-translated copy needed to be edited by a native English speaker - such as me or one of my colleagues - and the edited version checked over by another editor (because you cannot spot your own mistakes).

      It's more labour-intensive (and thus, expensive) than you might think.

      As for the site design, it's based off the German one - it's hosted on the same servers and managed through the same CMS. German people like a rather more conservative style of Web design than we are used to on the English-language Web. :-)

      --
      Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
    4. Re:So learn German by David+Gerard · · Score: 1

      Sort of. I've been researching stuff recently in the tech press, and was surprised how different the "same" story could be in Heise and The H.

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    5. Re:So learn German by David+Gerard · · Score: 1

      See, you shoulda got Andrew writing for you. Just imagine the page hit counts!

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    6. Re:So learn German by Lproven · · Score: 1

      Pardon my vast ignorance. Which Andrew? I know dozens, I'm sure.

      --
      Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
  9. I think I speak for many people when I say by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    The what shut down, exactly?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  10. in other news by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    In vaguely related new, unfortunately, the rapper D'ache (pronounced D H but not spelled as such) is still around
    http://www.reverbnation.com/dache

    1. Re:in other news by slashmydots · · Score: 1

      Okay, wrong D'Ache. The real D'Ache is from either Chicago or Milwaukee, much older, and pronounces it D H.

  11. Re:Buy the domain by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    That would be called "The Big Tentacle".

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  12. Re:Preparation H is shutting down? by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    Agony would have been funnier.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  13. Always very few commentors by gpm · · Score: 1

    I read h-online on a regular basis and will miss it. Always read the What's new in Kernel *.* features for example.

    A give-away that the site didn't have high readership was the very low number of comments added to the articles - often none and sometimes might get as high 3 or 4.

  14. The H was awesome by water-and-sewer · · Score: 2

    I'm seeing a lot of snarky "well, I never heard of them so ..." posts here. The fact is, the H was a source of some pretty great journalism. They're German and they had a lot of German content too. I discovered them through some insightful articles about SUSE Linux, which was (obviously) closely linked to Germany at one point.

    This week I've seen several niche news providers I like shut down, always because they find it's too hard to make money off it. I can relate - I've got a site that struggles too.

    I wonder if we're not headed to a generation of uninformed people and shitty, community-run group-think blogs straddled by a couple of old-school, pandering-to-the-masses traditional media.

    What happened to the Internet? Oh yeah, everyone decided they should be able to have things - especially information - for free.

    --
    If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
    1. Re:The H was awesome by mysticalreaper · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We need to get more creative about funding methods. What ever happened to micropayments? If you pitched in 5 cents for every article with merit that you read, would that make a difference? We must have a better idea than advertising.

    2. Re:The H was awesome by Qzukk · · Score: 1

      What ever happened to micropayments?

      It's been almost 20 years now and the banks STILL refuse to get out of the way.

      If you pitched in 5 cents for every article with merit that you read, would that make a difference?

      Sure, after the bank takes their 25 cent transaction fee. Plus 5%.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    3. Re:The H was awesome by Tordanik · · Score: 1

      What ever happened to micropayments?

      It's been almost 20 years now and the banks STILL refuse to get out of the way.

      With Flattr, that problem has mostly been solved. You transfer a relatively large sum to them (compared to the value of each donation), use it to reward a bunch of recipients over time, and the recipients pull money out of the system once enough has accumulated.

      By doing it like this, the bank transaction fees do not apply to the individual microdonations, only to getting money into and out of the system. Of course they charge their own 10% fee, but imo that's tolerable and no longer the prohibitive overhead that used to haunt microdonations.

  15. what the heck? by lkcl · · Score: 1

    why didn't they post stories on slashdot?? then they would have got some attention. in fact... hang on: why have i *never* seen an article on h-online cross-referenced anywhere, and why have i *never* seen them in a google search??

    1. Re:what the heck? by dltaylor · · Score: 1

      Because you weren't reading any of the articles of substance about the subjects they cover(ed)? /. IS how I found out about h-online.

  16. I Am Unaware, Hear Me Roar by reallocate · · Score: 1

    Says more about you than them

    Besdies, how do you know it's such a great resource if this is the first you've heard of it?

    --
    -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
    1. Re:I Am Unaware, Hear Me Roar by sproketboy · · Score: 1

      It's called clicking the link and reading some of the articles? Ever heard of that dufus?

  17. How does it go wrong like this? by thatkid_2002 · · Score: 1

    If asked, I would have said that they were in my top 5 IT sites, but the fact is that I rarely actually went to them. I don't know why exactly I didn't go more. What makes a site be at the forefront of somebody's mind when they sit down with coffee in pursuit of their daily news? The best reason I can come up with is that the name wasn't quite as punchy as "slashdot.org" or "ars technica"...