I, Cringely version 3.01 | Hacker News Reader

I, Cringely version 3.01

cringely.com

48 pointsevo_914 comments

I grew up reading Cringely and this is the first time I have visited his blog in years. He seems to want to blame external factors on his decision to stop writing and concentrating on books, but the fault lies with himself.

There are thousands of bloggers with a lot less experience and a lower level of writing quality who survive and do well from blogging. Cringely misplaces the blame on the advertising market, which has only been growing in the time period he describes.

For some reason he thought he could register a wordpress blog, insert some Javascript from a cheap ad network and then 'file' his columns once a week and that would work. He has done little to take advantage of his brand, the community around him, or adjust to how blogging and the explosion in consumer internet and apps changed technology journalism.

Outside of HN I have never seen his columns or posts promoted, or read a comment from him on Twitter, or reddit, or Facebook, or any other blog - or anything that would get his content infront of potential readers.

The world overtook him and blew him over, and he doesn't seem to realize why or what happen.

As a Cringely fan, I sadly have to agree.

Disagree, a lot of bloggers get as far as a book deal and that's the end of blogging for them. I think you're reading too much in to the why he's stopping - I think the new projects he's embarking on are more interesting than his blog.

His posts tend to get around tech sites, you mentioned HN already, http://www.theregister.co.uk run a lot of his stuff, also:

http://slashdot.org/tag/cringely

http://www.reddit.com/domain/cringely.com/

I interpreted his post as "While I am now 60, I can't retire yet as I have 3 young children, but I can't support myself from blogging - since that market crashed - therefor I am going to write a book"

It is the other post that goes into the blog ad rates falling: http://www.cringely.com/2012/11/02/ad-networks-are-killing-t...

I think he realizes, it's just a game he doesn't want to play, and he's willing to cut a publisher a share to avoid it.

Watching Triumph of the Nerds with my Dad in the mid-ninties is one of my fondest memories, and played no small part inspiring me to study computer science and subsequently get involved with starting companies.

Accidental Empires (the book), remains full of detailed insights into the emergence of Silicon Valley and startup culture. The fact the show was set in the mid ninties may make it seem a tad dated by today's standard, but it was fascinating to watch Cringely talk with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, John Sculley, folks from IBM, Xerox, and more.

As a 15 year old watching on a sofa from 6,000 miles away, I was incredibly inspired by the tales of dedication to product creation and hyper growth. It's a part of what inspired me to move to the Bay Area years later.

I look forward to re-reading the annotated version of Accidental Empires and hope Bob continues to write (and interview!) for many years to come.

This may sound pendatic, but Accidental Empires is a must read, even after all these years. Particularly if you did not live through the initial rise of the personal computing industry or were too young for it to have any conscious impact on you.

I take it as a humbling record of just how grueling this industry is. But also just how much it spins on happenstance, timing and of course interpersonal politics.

If any lessons come out of that book, it may still be true that putting your effort being creating (or undermining) a standard is one of the core engines of this space.

I have mixed feelings about this announcement. On the one hand, I really enjoyed Triumph of the Nerds. On the other, Cringely came off as a self-oriented, egotistical guy (I remember the scene where he threatened the TV crew with a piece of bat when his plane build project wasn't going well) with few unique insights and little depth.

Now that I think about it, these two facts are in line with his announcement. What he brought to the scene was to act as a tech interpreter for the baby boomers. The novelty has worn off and he's tapped out. This seems very similar to what happened to Dvorak, and what happens to a lot of bloggers: he exhausted his material and the world passed him by.

For me, Cringely was the documenter and Dvorak mistook his own place in history for credibility in analyzing the future. The tech industry is exhaustively self-documenting now, and so I hold out hope that Cringely can find his place in the modern world since I've looked to him as something like "Uncle Computers" ever since the before-times.

I really miss the old header image, it's still on the server:

http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/uploads/cringely_header_2...

It's still on the front page.

That's crazy. Can't see it with Firefox, but with Chrome!?

I find the drop-in-advertising rates the most interesting item. I don't follow this closely, is revenue-per-click actually dropping?

No, it is growing, and growing really well. At a macro level more and more advertising spend is moving to online. It is being sucked out of newspaper and television and sunk into online, which is now a $15B market (for display ads only) - 23% growth from 2011-12[1].

As for CPC rates, this link has a nice table showing the increase[0]. Anecdotally I can tell you that my own data corresponds with what they see (across a number of clients/startups I have worked with in past 5-6 years):

[0] http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/je-hochman-benchm...

[1] http://cdn.crowdscience.com/blog/2011/11/online_advertising_...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com