Suck, Feed and Plastic on the ropes?
April 4, 2001 6:50 AM Subscribe
posted by revbrian at 7:07 AM on April 4, 2001
posted by darren at 7:17 AM on April 4, 2001
My impression of both publications is that they have run on extremely small staffs. Otherwise, they might already be dead. Right now, banner advertising revenue has dried up so completely that even a small staff is going to be hard to support, much less make a profit.
Plastic wants to license Slashcode to others? What do they think we are, stupid?
This threw me for a loop too. How could the company license an open-source Slashcode clone (and who would buy it if they did?).
posted by rcade at 8:24 AM on April 4, 2001
posted by dhartung at 8:37 AM on April 4, 2001
posted by MrBaliHai at 10:14 AM on April 4, 2001
And when you've ragged on and sneered at everyone and everything under the sun, you're not going to find a lot of friendly faces around when the going gets rough.
As for Plastic: The nested tables! It's hard to be a successful site when 75% of your pages make the average browser slow to such a crawl it takes 60 seconds or more to interpret and display the HTML.
posted by aaron at 11:12 AM on April 4, 2001
I only wish I had found Feed earlier, since it is usually more lucid and interesting than Slate or Salon, and less ranting than their Suck-brethren. I'd miss them both, though.
Plastic is hopeless. Half the posts are shameless self-plugs from the editors' own sites (Modern Humorist, Wired, and TeeVee most notably), and the only people posting comments are the ones trying to win the Amazon gift certificates.
posted by briank at 12:17 PM on April 4, 2001
aaron, the counterexample to your no-nested-tables-in-a-successful-site theorem is, of course, Slashdot. Furthermore, 60 seconds is an exaggeration. I've had a Plastic thread with 100+ comments in it take a good long while (~15s) to load & render, but relative to the amount of time spent reading, it's nothing. (Besides, that's what multiple browser windows are for.)
posted by brantstrand at 12:50 PM on April 4, 2001
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:55 PM on April 4, 2001
posted by Skot at 1:15 PM on April 4, 2001
If wasted seconds are really such a bane, perhaps the web isn't really where it's at for you anyway.
posted by brantstrand at 1:54 PM on April 4, 2001
posted by Doug at 2:15 PM on April 4, 2001
posted by beefula at 3:05 PM on April 4, 2001
i'll find what i like myself thankyouverymuch.
posted by subpixel at 6:28 PM on April 4, 2001
subpixel--
If you'll find what you like yourself,
what exactly are you doing on MeFi???
posted by brantstrand at 8:59 PM on April 4, 2001
posted by hidely at 10:54 PM on April 4, 2001
I'm happy for you that you have a faster computer than I do. You're welcome to come over anytime and check out the loading times on my machine. And for whatever reason, Slashdot pages load much more quickly, though still not fast enough on really long threads.
The "speed = hits" theory has been proven many times over. If your page loads too slowly, people will abandon it in droves.
The problem with Modern Humorist is that they reek of surviving off their connections. Their material turns up on just about every site that considers itself to be hip and cool, often the same material, or at least material that mines the same lode over and over. (I've lost count of how many times I've come across samples from their "My First Presidentiary" book in different places.) It's not just a feeling, either; the web site itself is in serious financial trouble, and they've laid off practically their entire staff. All their income is from other web sites and web-related magazines. And we all know how well that business plan has worked out for other dotcoms out there.
posted by aaron at 10:23 PM on April 5, 2001
I bought one of those for the office. Then expensed it under "company morale."
posted by kindall at 1:49 AM on April 6, 2001
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Feed and Suck were always decent if not sometimes brilliant. If they go down in flames, it's only because they tried to support too many people with too little advertising. If they had stayed small, maybe this wouldn't have been an issue. (Of course this is the problem with many of the good companies in the internet boom who've had to fold because they tried to get too big too fast.)
If one person (Matt) can get a 5000 person community up and running like MeFi, Plastic doesn't need more than 1 or 2 people max. Plastic feels very plastic too- few comments of any value, few stories of any interest to me. I didn't get it when they launched, still don't.
posted by gen at 7:01 AM on April 4, 2001