SB Nation's History, Philosophy & What to Expect from Tech

I was elated to read overnight that many former Engadget staffers had joined forces to continue their craft in a new home - teaming up with SB Nation, currently home to more than 300 sports blogs spanning professional and amateur teams around the world. The excitement came not because we need yet another technology blog network (as there are a few already), but because of their choice - partnering with a forward-looking company that has harnessed the fervor of sports fandom, giving people a voice, becoming the truest example of people-powered blogging in the world, driving addicting communities and real-world interaction around shared interests. If the same process is followed, but applied to the world of gadgetry, the results could be tremendous.

For those who don't know the history, the first blog to pioneer SB Nation was Athletics Nation, a baseball-centric blog covering the Oakland Athletics. The blog came about as Tyler Bleszinski, longtime A's fan and sufferer (as am I) couldn't find a place online to vent about the team in good times and bad. With powerhouse ESPN suffering from East Coast bias, and local papers having no way to interact with fellow fans, he was pushed by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas to start a blog - which later spread to a family of similar blogs, beginning with baseball, and later branching out to all manner of sports, from mixed martial arts to cycling, figure skating and golf. If there's a sport that has fans who want to talk about it, SB Nation has been there.

Belatedly (for me anyway), I found Athletics Nation in early 2005, and my first thought was, "where have you been all my life?". The site promised real-time gameday threads to chronicle the day's contest, opinion posts from front page writers and regular contributors alike. Later, "Blez", as was his online moniker, gained access to exclusive interviews with A's general manager Billy Beane, owner Lew Wolff, and other players. Athletics Nation (or AN) was on the map, and started to be noted for its influence among die-hard fans. Bay Area sports journalists including Susan Slusser and Mychal Urban also made appearances, talking with ANers directly.

In July of 2005, fooling around with the Mac comics application Comic Life, I made a comic featuring then-A's player, Eric Byrnes, who would be amazing one play, boneheaded the next. (See comic) This silliness led to another comic and another, to the tune of three in five days, before the A's short-circuited my plans by trading Byrnes to the Rockies. With this void, Blez asked me to make an A's comic a regular feature, and the ANtics were born - posted each Sunday through the season and occasionally in the off-season. I kept this up for a few years, before tech and kids took over the rest of my life.

Meanwhile, due to the ANtics, I gained front-page publishing access to Athletics Nation, and was eventually put in the mix for gameday threads and other weekly posts, along with other unpaid writers who filled out the week. Opinion posts (like this one from 2008) could get 10 comments from the community or hundreds. Game threads always got hundreds, for the community would writhe in pain for every popout and celebrate every run together, regardless of geography.

Where SB Nation differs from all the other major tech sites is that fans have a voice - beyond the comment streams which often become full of vitriol. SB Nation blogs feature fan posts on any related topic, and the community generally does a good job voting up the great posts and highlighting the poorly thought out ones. SB Nation prides itself on linking to third party content and not regurgitating other's articles, even if the blog's main focus is not on break news and reporting, but instead being part of the experience.

SB Nation blogs typically have a pair or more moderators who can manage user accounts, delete comments, promote fan posts to the front page, or send users email to say they are on probation. Users can recommend great comments and posts or flag them for review by a moderator. And over time, since every participant requires a user name and one's history is attached to the user name, you see a real community develop, with people who have history and a shared experience. Blez and the Athletics Nation team celebrated the community through yearly "AN Days" at the Coliseum to take in games, and helped collect money from the community for appropriate charitable causes. AN even featured an online store for shirts and other gear that bear the site's name.

Since the site's start with a single blog, run by a diehard Eric Chavez fan, the burgeoning network now features regional hubs for local teams, a dedicated baseball hub (which I highlighted Friday) and a pattern of success which requires commitment to hard work, fun and community interaction. If the track record of SB Nation is to be repeated in the world of technology, you can expect writers that are accessible, fans who have a voice, excitement about gadgets and software, and a standard look and feel that has you knowing you've reached an SB Nation site upon first visit.

If you're a longtime louisgray.com reader, this shouldn't surprise you. In 2006 I highlighted the growing network. In 2007, I highlighted the home page revamp. In October of 2008, I highlighted their mobile site work and subsequent funding round. I have been a longtime believer in the model of fan-centric publishing and it's clear that it has worked. If the SB Nation Tech team is half as successful as the sports side has been, there's no question the network will be a must-read, go-to, community.

The CES News River Sends Gadget Blogs Into Overdrive

Google Reader Volume Spikes During CES

Watching the trends in technology news publications is a lot like watching the seasons. It's fairly predictable, and has its ebb and flow. The more sites and stories you read, the greater the value, and the more "liquid" the pace seems to be, as spikes and valleys are smoothed. But no more evident is the acceleration clear from one week to the next as the week of CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, following the hangover doldrums of a post-Christmas holiday. The glut of news from this week, with CES kicking off in Las Vegas, not to mention Google's Nexus One announcement earlier on Tuesday, has most prominently put gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo into hyper mode, with many other tech outlets looking to draft behind their lead.

While this is not a huge surprise that both blogs are stepping on the accelerator for this event, the data shows just how much more.

In the last few months, it has not been uncommon for me to scan about 1,000 articles a day in Google Reader - skipping most, sharing a few, and reading others in full. Giving 10 seconds to each story means about 3 hours a day, and 5 seconds a story makes the time needed about 90 minutes.

In the lead-up to Christmas, and the week afterward, my usual forays into Google Reader, as well as FriendFeed and Twitter, were significantly lightened, with news at near standstill, saw fewer items at a pass, totaling about 700 items a day, and half that on the holidays themselves, or on weekends, scraping just over 200. Quiet indeed.


Engadget's Coverage Skyrockets During CES Week

But in the last two days, by themselves, Gizmodo and Engadget have delivered well more than 200 posts per day. While Engadget delivers an already-aggressive 40-50 stories on a given workday, the CES waterfall has pushed them to triple or quadruple output, with about 150 new stories flowing. (Keep in mind they are the official blog of CES, so many stories are no doubt prepared in advance.) Meanwhile, Gizmodo, no slouch at about 70 items a day per usual, is keeping apace with just under 150 items a day. This acceleration with both sites, as well as the padding from traditional tech networks that are also following CES, has pushed my aggregate workload to about 1,300 items a day, double the holiday rate, and 25% ahead of normal.


Gizmodo Doubles Down Efforts for CES
There are other ebbs and flows you can count on from the tech Web. You can always expect spikes around Macworld and other Apple events, and you can expect drops on US-only holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. But there's nothing like CES for pushing the sheer volume of coverage up to a new level. The coordination required by an editorial team at Engadget and Gizmodo on the week of CES is sure to be intricate, and is something to be impressed with indeed.

Of Note: Chris Saad recommends checking out CNET's CES River as well for CES News and updates.

Alexa Web Statistics Show Old Media Influence Nosedive

As flawed as Alexa's Web statistics can be, a quick array of searches displays a very clear message - that traditional media portals, including CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and even more trendy media monoliths, like ESPN.com, are dramatically slipping in overall rankings, losing visitors to new media by the droves - no matter how you dice the data.

Sites that used to be among the top visited sites in all the Web have plummeted, as fickle Web visitors have turned their attention away from the brands they once relied on to new brands that have taken their place, including, unsurprisingly, Facebook, YouTube, and major blogs, like TechCrunch and Engadget.

This change, according to Alexa's statistics, has accelerated, first starting in 2005, and at an increasing pace over the last two years.

For example: CNN, a top 20 site as recently as the second half of 2005, has plummeted below 100, nearing 120th overall.



The New York Times, a top 50 site in early 2006, has roller coastered down to nearly 300 overall.



The Washington Post, a rising star in 2005, peaked below 150 in early 2006, and has collapsed to nearly 1,000 today.



It's not just an East Coast phenomenon. The LA Times, one of the top 500 sites on the Web just 18 months ago, has recently seen its ranking dip below the 2,000 level, with no sign of a rebound.



Moving north, SFGate.com, home to the San Francisco Chronicle, has paralleled the LA Times fall, from above 500 at the beginning of last year, to nearly 2,000 overall today.



And the drop isn't limited to only newspaper sites. ESPN.com, part of the Go.com corporate family, representing 60+% of the network's traffic, according to Alexa, has dropped from the top 20 levels to around 50 today.



This isn't to say all is bad. In the place of old media, Web visitors are taking their traffic elsewhere. One major stop: YouTube - a top 5 site that was virtually nowhere just two years ago.



TechCrunch, invisible before the end of 2005, has catapulted into the top 1,000, passing up both the LA Times and SFGate.com site, set to pass the Washington Post next.



Engadget, from the 6,000 range in 2005 to between 500 and 1,000 overall today.



Facebook, a rising star, from 100,000 in 2005 to a top 8 site today. (Ignore the blip)



What does this overly long set of Alexa graphs mean? It means that what we've all suspected is true. Old media brands have not capitalized on the early success and traffic brought their way in the fledgling days of the Web. As their traffic has stagnated, and in many cases dropped significantly, more agile, interactive, forms of media have risen up to take their place. While there's still a need for investigative journalism and on the spot reporting, still the realm of the mainstream media, Web aficionados are all too happy to look elsewhere, for news, for entertainment, and for engagement.

Backlink Backlash Could Bring Forth Change

My post-midnight ramblings on the questionable practice of overly relying on internal links certainly hit a nerve in the blogosphere, drawing attention from all corners, as we saw comments from Ryan Block at Engadget and Robert Scoble of Scobleizer, while representatives of TechCrunch and Gawker Media also weighed in on whether or not they found issues with the rapidly-growing model of preferring links to their own blog as opposed to the outside world.

Some reactions:

Surflizard: Sneaky Links

"The key to reading Engadget is to know that only the last link in a post is usually relevant to the post’s subject, and every other link is usually self-referencing spam."

Kent Newsome: Evening Reading: 9/12/07

"The problem, of course, comes down to the prospect of money. Rather than double linking, I'd call it double ad-serving. I'd love to know the average duration of those internal link page views."

The Last Podcast: Internal/Double Linking is a Bad Practice

"I am glad others are picking up on this, as it is annoying the heck out of me and keeps me from enjoying some of the best blogs out there."

Ryan Block of Engadget did a great job illustrating why Engadget favors self-referential links over external links. He notes that stories that reference other sources do contain an external link at the conclusion of the story, but he disagreed with my belief that tags should lead to referenced companies instead of prior coverage. In a post he titled On backlinking (or “internal linking”), he said:

"At Engadget, our MO is to offer a compressed, editorialized edition of technology news. Sometimes we can go as long (or longer) as any big-name newspaper on an important story, but because we do (and must!) have greater respect for our readers’ intelligence and attention, generally speaking we expect them to understand the jist of what we’re talking about when we start to geek out."

Essentially, he said Engadget readers already know the URLs for companies like Apple, Google, or Microsoft's XBox, so to link their way wouldn't add much value. Fair enough. But he did say the site will reevaluate their frequency for backlinking, adding, "I’m sure we could use additional fine tuning in what and how often we backlink, which I’ll be evaluating closer starting today."

His comments mirrored those from Mark Hendrickson of TechCrunch, who wrote in a comment on this blog, "We often link to CrunchBase pages rather than company websites because we think that our company profiles often give readers better corporate overviews than they would get by going straight to company websites," adding, "We do realize that many readers find this linking behavior undesirable, so we are actively looking into ways we can refer to both corporate websites and CrunchBase pages from the main blog."

Elsewhere, Nick Denton of Gawker Media wrote that the network has recently changed how they handle internal links versus external links, writing, "We have changed the style of internal tag links. They are no longer underlined. So the emphasis is on the external links, but regular readers know they can get background on a name or a product by clicking the text."

In 24 hours, we got an excellent cross-section of some of the tech blogosphere's most influential and most respected blogs. With the exception of Mashable, all sites I referenced, or commenters referenced, provided reason and updates as to why they operate the way they do.

(UPDATE: Mashable checked in this morning, saying "We have a verbal policy that the first link should go to the site in question, so that one is human error," and "I can guarantee that we'll try to avoid the LinkedIn type screnarios. As for linking to reference material...possibly we'll find a way to offer the user a choice.")

That's why, even when I see things that raise my eyebrows, I have faith in the direction blogs are going, and how we can continue to enable conversations. It should be interesting to watch and see how after the post ran through the Scoble/TechMeme gauntlet, if we see changes.

Internal Linking On Some Tech Blogs Is Out of Control

It seems the more major bloggers tend to ask for the same rights, privileges and respect given traditional journalists, the more frequently I'm seeing some of them violate best practices for information sharing and news gathering. One major issue I see is that some of the most popular blogs, including Engadget and Mashable, prefer to lead readers deep into their archives rather than linking out to the true sources of the story.

What do I mean by this exactly?

In real-world journalism, a reporter impartially offers up the news, as well as balanced commentary from individuals involved, whether they be the subject of a story, witness, or interested party. All efforts are taken to introduce the reader to the source of the information. On the Web, a story on Apple's iPod would link to the Apple Web site or directly to the iPod page. But if you look at Engadget, a hyperlink you would expect to take you to Apple would instead either take you to a previous story about Apple, or to search results within Engadget on the term Apple.

And now it seems Mashable, one leading Web log which follows the hot tech news of the day, is taking the same approach, much to the detriment of readers - many of whom likely find themselves clicking first, and asking questions later.

For example, from tonight's story: "Obama On LinkedIn"

The reporter writes:

"Sen. Barack Obama now has a LinkedIn account. We all knew that Obama is making the most of Internet culture, launching his own social network, gaining a larger-than-life presence on MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter. He’s at the top of his game, according to a recent Nielsen study. The only surprise about Obama’s LinkedIn account is how seemingly late it is."

Being a typical reader, I would expect the three links in this paragraph, to LinkedIn, Twitter and Nielsen, to take me to those services' respective sites, as my links do. But they don't. Instead, the links go to related prior stories from Mashable, in an effort to keep the reader locked into the site as long as possible, either to increase ad revenue, or to possibly make the reader think the site more valuable due its deep archives and previous history.

In June of this year, Yuvi Panda analyzed Engadget and found that more than 40% of all links from Engadget were back to itself, "about 25 times the number of links of it’s closest competitor (which incidentally happens to be EngadgetMobile, an offshoot of Engadget)." Engadget, an unquestioned leader in gadget and tech news, should feel confident enough to send readers off site and expect them to come back.

When I link internally, I introduce the link as a previous post, and when I link to Engadget, you'll know the link goes to Engadget, not a previous story I wrote on Engadget. I believe the practice of hotlinking keywords instead to internal stories is sneaky and doesn't serve readers who are looking for the true sources of information. I hope we see the practice's growth stop cold.

Update: Robert Scoble calls the practice "double linking", while Joe of SurfLizard proposes a new term for this practice: "masterblinking".

The Biggest Blogs Aren't Really Blogs Any More

Though my stance is likely a controversial one, I don't believe that the most successful blogs out there are really blogs in the true sense of the word as they were originally intended. Instead, the uber-blogs, like TechCrunch, GigaOM, Engadget, Mashable, Read/WriteWeb and others, have morphed into a new phase of their lives, mimicking old world media.

While millions of people continue to create popular and less popular Web logs chronicling their thoughts, lives and activities, TechCrunch and the rest have instead turned into product announcement and release launching pads, typically lacking a personal touch or insight. They have evolved from their own mouthpieces to instead, mouthpieces for others.

Gone is the personal touch and feeling that is so embedded in the blogosphere, replaced by an air of elitism and selective news aggregation mixed with startups gleeful over a successful data point of public relations.

It's been proven that popular blogs can retain the very personal one-to-one conversational style. Great examples of this include Robert Scoble's Scobleizer, Dave Winer's Scripting.com, Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion and Jason Calacanis. But especially over the last 12 months, you can see a divergence, as the blog powerhouses are much less about the comments and conversation, and more about them acting like media. Meanwhile, old media, primarily those covering technology, are adding interactive tools made famous through blogging, like comments, and the ubiquitous "Digg This" icons on every story. The convergence of old media and new media is happening before our eyes.

This change isn't necessarily all bad, but I strongly believe the time to refer to these new media sites as "blogs" is gone. TechCrunch, in my opinion, is no more of a blog than is Computerworld, InfoWorld or eWeek, these days. Even InfoWorld has gone solely online, ditching their print magazine equivalent. The site's historical roots are truely embedded in the blog world, but you could say the site has grown up - now with a full network of sites, and even a trade show for startups looking to use the platform as their springboard to fame.

Will all blogs that find success move away from their humble origins? Likely not. But even as we enjoy the scoops, product introductions, reviews and obituaries from TechCrunch, GigaOM and others, we should make a conscious attempt to recognize in this new world of media and the "24 second news cycle", that the landscape is rapidly changing and definitions need constant tweaking.

How Much RSS is Too Much RSS?

Engadget's Ryan Block asks the question today. "Is Engadget’s daily wall-to-wall coverage too much of a good thing?" Are subscribers to the Engadget feed, who can anticipate upwards of 30 new stories a day, inundated by having too much to read, some of which might not find their fancy?

The issue is a very real one for us on the bleeding edge of information consumption. For those of us RSS wonks who have upwards of 100 or so individual feeds, finding the time to read hundreds of posts on all topics can be a demanding task. I consistently scroll through 500 or so articles on Google Reader every weekday, and about half that number on the weekend. Engadget is one of the most prolific blogs, usurping even ESPN.com's main feed.

According to my Google Reader Trends, Engadget posted 28.3 items per day over the last 30 days. Of those 848 items, I read 100% of them. Only an aggregate newsfeed I developed for work was more busy, tagging me with new items 42.7 times a day. The other mega-feeds? ESPN.com with 26.8 items, TechMeme with 22.8, Slashdot with 20.4, Eschaton with 18.5, Talking Points Memo with 15.2, Daily Kos with 14.6, and Mashable with 14.4 posts daily.

Combined, those alone tally more than 200 posts a day, good for 40% of my reading. But in terms of quality over quantity, Engadget is among the very best. I've considered unsubscribing from Slashdot, which seems to lag Digg or Engadget these days. I actually did unsubscribe from Boing Boing a few weeks ago because the signal to noise ratio was too high. I've also considered reducing my political feeds like Eschaton and Talking Points Memo, which tend to be duplicates or feature too many "New Open Thread" type posts that don't add value to the RSS reader.

As Ryan asks what the solution is, I would argue that in Engadget's case, it's not to write less through reducing the amount of posts that are accepted. Instead, it's to better let readers know that reduced sets of feeds are available on specific topics. Engadget, like ESPN.com and other busy sites, offers the ability to subscribe to channels dedicated to Gaming, HDTV, Storage or Wireless, for example. Rather than get all 30 stories a day, the focused reader would get 2 to 10. It's not about reducing options, it's about being a smarter consumer.

I see the onus to be on the reader to better maintain their consumption of news than it is on the newsmaker to reduce their output. In the world of massive information, we as consumers should get ever more adept about how we get our news, and how we share it. So Ryan, don't worry about us being forced to read too much. Let us make the hard decisions, and you keep focused on bringing the news.