I am a regular reader and once used to be a loyal fan, this site helped spur the growth of my own website (moddin'.net) many years ago and we were well supported by the team back then. However Im seriously disappointed by the level of commercialisation the site has now reached after the acquisition and change of management. Once upon a time the site was ran by a group of dedicated enthusiasts dedicated to encouraging the growth of the moddin' industry, not the growth of a commercial organisation. Over the last few months I have been extremely disapointed by the quality of the content appearing on the site. Other members have pointed out that it has been largely duplicated from the Custom PC magazine. Which confuses me more, as the magazine should either be Bit-Tech branded or be its own website etc. Now I may not be one to talk as my website clearly didnt fair the longevity that Bit has, but that was more due to lack of time, marketing experience, and staff commitment. But I feel I speak for more than myself when I make this point. Today (like last week) I read an article which I felt was way short of the previous standards. Once upon a time I enjoyed a thorough review with comprehensive photography. Now I get a single page with a couple of photos (normally stock) and a rough opinion by an author that I am not convinced has spent more than 1/2 hour with the device. Not only that but as I scrolled down the page I realised that almost 70-80% of the page was advertising. I counted 11 separate adverts, not including the publishers link. In fact whilst I was writing this article, I must have accidentally clicked an advert somewhere which has invaded my ears with a barrage of antivirus/pc protection advertising, with no sign of the cause to disable it. I had to revert to my PC's mute feature. Its a shame as Bit used to be and I still hope is the benchmark in the moddin' world but it doesnt feel that there is any dedication to the industry anymore. It feels it is benefiting of the community it has built as old (with the mod of the month feature, not actual content). I wish for the past efforts of Macroman and linear, and the management talents of Koolvin. Sorry for the rant, Im sure it will invoke some flames, but I feel it is necessary if this site is to continue in the success of its predecessors, where its competitors (including my own) have failed
I don't think there's many who disagree with you so I don't think you'll be in for much flaming. It's a shame because this all feels a bit like people are having a crack at the editorial team, which I don't think people are as the situation isn't their fault. I mean, not having the time to do the suggested hardware is completely unacceptable imo. Clearly Dennis seem to want to watch it die, I don't know the site viewing figures but I'd be extremely surprised if they'd increased in the last year.
I think the site just become a victim of it's own success. The ads will supply a lot of much needed funding to keep everything running smoothly. Plus now there is so much more going on that everything is getting condensed to make way for other content. Thats the way I see it anyway.
I both hear and understand your complaints; it's fair to say that Bit-tech has changed a lot in recent years, though there's more to those changes than just the fact that Dennis took over. Unfortunately, while I am hopeful that things will change, there are significant changes underway at Bit-tech and Custom PC at the moment and they will take a few months to play out. There are also limits on what we can say about these changes; all I can ask is that you'll bear with us for as long as you can.
I'm not normally one to be concerned over the adverts etc as I would rather deal with them than have to pay myself, however, I seriously hate the intel bar at the bottom of the page, it's invading my reading and annoying the frack out of me, next it'll be random adverts popping up over an article
Although I understand that there are limits on what you can say, are you able to give any more indication of what the changes are. Might help put people at ease about issues like this...
I'm afraid we can't really say anything more that that as the changes are still being worked on. As soon as everybody comes back from holiday in January we'll be able to say more.
It's not selling out really, bit has been bought by a company that wants to maximise profit as any business should do in our economic system. So now ad revenue and page hits takes precedence over quality of articles etc.... Just the way it is, things won't get better as bit has already changed.
The reality is that bit-tech too would have fallen by the wayside, like many of its early competitors, had the required changes not been made. I speak as a former Editor of the site and I fully understood the realities of running bit-tech as a business, no matter how much we wanted it to be a hobby site. In 2004, we were all reaching a point where we either had to start earning enough to pay a small team very low salaries for the jobs we were doing or let the hard work we'd all put in melt away into oblivion like so many other hobbyist sites at the time. One such reality was the difficulty of monetizing modding content - the horizons had to be expanded - even though there were ways we could monetize that modding content. We did monetize it, but it was difficult because the ways to monetize that content are limited and certainly not going to provide enough funds to put roofs over the houses of the lean editorial/development/sales team we had working for the site from 2005-2009. I can't speak for what the site is doing now, but we were running a successful, lean and fast-moving business with a hugely talented team of people during my tenure as Editor. The whole team was like a family.
