Is SourceForge nka Geeknet (LNUX) About to Blow it a Second* (Third) Time in its Ten Year History?
April 23, 2010
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[CORRECTION] The second time was when silicon valley web 2.0 startup, digg.com, blindsided Dexter/Holland, Michigan's slashdot founders...
[UPDATE1] What happened to Slashdot? (originally published February 7, 2010)
Slashdot fumbles...digg.com, web 2.0 recovers...Arguably the greatest story never told...What happened? Who was asleep at the wheel? The future was literally stolen from Slashdot by the present...by smarter, more passionate futurists/technologists as it was being hailed as the future of media...
What happened to Slashdot? Slashdot appears to have not evolved as a competitive Web 2.0 entity viz-a-viz digg, twitter, facebook, et al. This is arguably symptomatic of a lack of common, focused passion and intellectual/technical bandwidth across Geeknet.
"...The Slashdot Effect - I recall times when my articles got slashdotted (a verb contributed to the English language like Googled). You would see several hundred thousand hits. Now one is lucky to see a few thousand. Either the Linux readers have been overwhelmed by the Microsoft web site killers or the articles just don't interest the Free Software Crowd. You should look at the comparison of Slashdot to Digg. You can find an Alexa chart comparing the two sites at this hyperlink. Notice how Digg came out of nowhere to challenge Slashdot. Digg is rated the 439th most trafficed web site on the Internet. Slashdot is ranked 265..." - (March 12, 2006)(1.)
Is Slashdot the future of media? On February 10, 2006, Sr. Editor Fortune, David Kirkpatrick, wrote "...If you want to see the future of media, go to
Slashdot.org.
Two things distinguish it -- it's the most popular news and information site with the tech cognoscenti, particularly programmers and engineers. And all of its content is created by its users. They submit about 700 stories per day, which staff editors vet and reduce down to the 30-35 that get published. Of the site's 5.5 million(2.) unique visitors per month, about 25 percent post comments about those stories...Says Valerie Williamson, vice president for marketing at OSTG, the open source technology group, which operates Slashdot: "Everybody's talking about the participation age, but we've been living it for eight years." Slashdot was started by two guys in Holland, Michigan in 1998 as what would now be called a blog...
General manager Jay Seimarco says that with upcoming search and other improvements, "we could see an explosion in what's already tremendous traffic."
Open source
But let's go back to examining Slashdot, because as a journalist it especially fascinates me. What it seems to represent is essentially open-source journalism. People fight to make their submission the one out of those 700 each day that will make it to the front page with a byline. "The ego value of that is huge," says Jeff Bates, OSTG's vice president of editorial operations and one of Slashdot's two co-founders.
Creating something of tremendous widespread utility for the ego value is a new phenomenon in contemporary business. It's part of what motivates open-source software programmers. As a well-paid professional journalist, when I hear that ego alone motivates contributors to a news site with 5.5 million(2.) unique visitors a month, I find it a bit unnerving, but unquestionably exciting.
Two weeks ago, Bates and crew introduced a new look to the site and improved its software. Traffic is up significantly. But he wants to increase the percentage of visitors who comment to at least 50 percent.
"Just wait until we rewrite the moderation system," Bates says. 'It's going to be sexy.'..." Source: Fortune, February 2006.
Note: Certain hyperlinks were added/updated to the above article e.g. for "Bates", "Jay Seirmarco", "two guys" and were not included with the original article.
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(1.) Fast forward to April 22, 2010. Digg.com's Alex.com traffic ranking on 4/22/2010 was 110. Slashdot's was 2,268. - (Source: Alexa.com, April 22, 2010).
(2.) Slashdot's numbers per Geeknet as of April 23, 2010 at Geek.net are "4 Million Monthly Unique Visitors".
References:
*(April 18, 2010) Is SourceForge nka Geeknet (LNUX) About to Blow it a Second Time in its Ten Year History?
(February 10, 2006) Is Slashdot the future of media? Source: David Kirkpatrick, Sr. Editor, Fortune Magazine
(March 12, 2006) What Happened to Slashdot? Source: tadelste, LXer
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