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Back in the day mashable seemed like a competitor to TechCrunch, with a focus on tech news and trends. Then they pivoted toward viral content, and were personally never a destination again.

It seemed a weird move even at the time. Why would you want to build a business that's contingent upon catching the zeitgeist in a bottle? That's so incredibly hard.

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If you look at raw traffic numbers Mashable is far bigger than Techcrunch and far more profitable.

What you are feeling and seeing is that the media is turned into a hyper-partisan machine where any issue discussed is in the context of extremes. It drives emotion, creates and drives viral content, and drives revenue. However, it doesn't produce substantive content one would find meaningful. It doesn't pay.

Are you sure? I know there are better sources than alexa, but its usually fairly accurate for top 1000 sites.

Techcrunch is 281 US, 632 world, Mashable is 364 US, 855 world.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/techcrunch.com https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mashable.com

A good example of wealth extraction vs wealth creation.

They recently started putting a good amount of affiliate products in-line with their other articles. Flat out deceptive titles leading you to believe they were reviews or viral content.

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