Purch Acquires Anandtech – What This Means to You

[WilliamM2]

Absolutely not. If your forums currently go down every Saturday night, you can and should expect to see the forums continue to go down every Saturday night.

Well that's disappointing. No other forum I have ever belonged to shuts down for hours once a week for maintenance. And a tech site no less?

 

[Printer Bandit]

 

[jpishgar]

One problem we have around here is that there is an enormous gulf between the main site and the forums. So, do you Purch guys think you could do something to change that situation? Or do you think it's even something that should see change?

More editorial involvement in community is always something I like to ask for. It's nice to get reporters and editorial guys diving in on the commentary for their articles and hashing it out with users in the forum. That's something we can always aspire to.

 

[jpishgar]

However, I'm sure there is a lot that can be done to improve things from where they stand today.

We can talk about ways to improve involvement, for sure. I know the editorial peeps don't have a lot of free time. They keep you guys hoppin'.

 

[jpishgar]

How do I go about accessing the "far greater resources" you've referenced vis–à–vis a Scrooge McDuck style vault full of gold coins?

You sir, as a user, get no additional access to the vast resources and lucky dime. The team, however - that's a different story!

 

[taq8ojh]

I don't understand the reason for this.
If the site claims to be self-sufficient financially (and even growing), why would you want to sell it? I guess it could be worth a few millions to someone, so perhaps the owner of the site needed a new luxury house or something?

Also, someone explain why would anyone want to buy a site like this. There is some revenue from ads (which everyone blocks and noone clicks on), right? So you waste millions on buying the site, and then you have to pay the staff that comes with it each month to get all the lousy profit from ads. That doesn't make sense.

What's even more puzzling is why would anyone buy several sites like this? That cannot be profitable.

 

[blairharrington]

Hello jpishgar. One thing that strikes me about this forum is how dated it looks. It really needs a refresh. I'd also like something that loads faster on my iPad. I don't like tapatalk and forums like Mac Rumors load quick and simply look cleaner.

 

[jpishgar]

One thing that strikes me about this forum is how dated it looks. It really needs a refresh.

Thanks for the input!

 

[Nebor]

Well that's disappointing. No other forum I have ever belonged to shuts down for hours once a week for maintenance. And a tech site no less?

It takes a while to back up the entire database to vinyl records every week.

 

[Nebor]

I don't understand the reason for this.
If the site claims to be self-sufficient financially (and even growing), why would you want to sell it? I guess it could be worth a few millions to someone, so perhaps the owner of the site needed a new luxury house or something?

Also, someone explain why would anyone want to buy a site like this. There is some revenue from ads (which everyone blocks and noone clicks on), right? So you waste millions on buying the site, and then you have to pay the staff that comes with it each month to get all the lousy profit from ads. That doesn't make sense.

What's even more puzzling is why would anyone buy several sites like this? That cannot be profitable.

Bro, do you even business?

 

[soccerballtux]

Purch today announced the acquisition of Anandtech.com, a leader in mobile, computing and IT analysis and reviews. Many of you know of Purch as the parent company of Tom’s Hardware. In hopes of clarifying some questions that naturally follow, allow me an opportunity to detail what this big announcement actually means to you as a part of the community: very, very little.

Q. Wait, what?
A. Purch bought Anandtech. Go take a peek at the press release and quotes from Anand and Ryan Smith here: http://purch.com/purch-acquires-anandtech-dominates-tech-expert-and-enthusiast-market/

Q. What does this mean for Anandtech?
A. Anandtech will continue to operate as it has always, with no change in day-to-day operations. The one major difference is that Anandtech will have access to far greater resources than before.

Q. What does this mean for the community policies and the way things work in the forum?
A. There will be no revolution, no coup d’état of the moderation team is underway. No policies are changing and the users in both communities are safe and secure. We won’t be rocking the boat, throwing the baby out with the bath water, or any other euphemism for screwing something up that works for the sake of change itself. Anandtech has a great thing going, and the people at Purch and Tom’s Hardware have always respected the Anandtech community and culture. It’s a lively, passionate crowd and that’s a big part of what makes Anandtech awesome. If there’s anything that does end up needing to change, it will happen slowly, at your urging, and with the Anandtech community’s direct input.

Q. What, if anything, will change though?
A. Again, we’d be bonkers to try to fix what isn’t broken. Anandtech has grown by quite a bit over the years, and everything you know and love will remain the same. The biggest change you may see is a greater investment in feature development and a pile of new content. We’re hoping we’ll be able to share our extensive tech industry contacts and resources, and we’ll leverage these to get more of the juicy news and reviews out to you. You may also start to see more direct involvement in the community from staffers, as we seek your input on coverage and expand engagement. By way of introduction, I’ll be hanging around to act as a point person and advocate, answering any questions you have.

Q. Are you firing or replacing everyone?
A. Hah! No. That would be unbelievably stupid.

Q. Will we be seeing new people?
A. Here and there you might. We like to grow our offerings, so as we expand coverage, you might spot some new faces over time.

Q. What about Anand?
A. This question comes up all the time on Tom’s Hardware, a site that was founded by Dr. Thomas Pabst back in 1996. Like many companies or sites, the founder moves on, but the essence remains. McDonald’s Hamburgers hasn’t seen Mr. Richard or Maurice McDonald for quite some time now. . To put it another way, a saying we’re fond of at Tom’s Hardware is that - “We are all Tom.” The spirit of the founder persists in a vibrant community on this namesake site with in-depth reviews and news coverage, and it will be entirely appropriate to say, with pride - “We are all Anand.”

Q. What about integrity? Will advertisers be running the show now?
A. We’ve got no plans to change what has made Anandtech great, and we won’t be budging on journalistic integrity.

Q. Will Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware be competing with each other for users?
A. Relations between the two sites have always been respectful and very cordial, and we share a chunk of users who visit both for news and to comment or participate in the community. Both sites have very unique cultures, and we won’t be messing around with the special sauce that makes either work. The biggest benefit to being part of the same family of brands is that the teams will be able to provide resources to each other that they wouldn’t normally have access to. It’s definitely a complimentary setup. Any competition that arises will be friendly, as in who can provide better, more in-depth coverage on a piece of tech.

Q. Will I have to register on Tom’s if I’m a member of Anandtech, or on Anandtech if I’m to continue using Tom’s?
A. Nope! There aren’t any changes to the current membership or registration setup. You can maintain registrations on both, either, or none if you like.

Q. So, for readers, this is basically a formality?
A. Pretty much! The impact to users of either site is minimal, if any at all. Over time, you’ll see additional content coming your way and things like presentation, experience, engagement and all that may improve, but there’s no big changes to your source for tech news on the web.

You may now set your hair on fire and run for the hills, if you so desire. Alternatively, I’m happy to answer any pressing questions you might have.

Warm Regards,
Joe Pishgar
Senior Community Manager, Purch

Tom's Hardware is crap and always has been crap. They may have been cordial to us, but I can certainly assure you the general consensus here does not care for them. You can scrape the comments sections and forums for tomshardware review links if you want to verify that
a). we don't link to them
b). respect their benchmarks very much, or
c). honestly, visit them regularly, if at all. I know it's been about a year since I did.

Having worked in the corporate world for some time and played the other side of the field-- the PR side-- I can say in other words this is a standard PR fluff response. We'll see how quickly articles start stretching between pages to cram more ads in-- a talent Tom's Hardware has most definitely perfected, no doubt likely from pressure from the holding company, Purch'd like hawk eagerly waiting to extract all life out of its prey before devouring...

Purch is welcome to assure us all they want that nothing will change, but I can assure them the readership (not the forums so much [hey, I said 'so much']) at Anandtech is some of the most meticulous on the internet, and we gravitated because there was quality content. If that changes, I, personally, will definitely move elsewhere. This is one (first/last) warning [it's just not worth the effort to fuss I have other things to bother with]; and I can assure you most won't even bother announcing their departure.

That said, I honestly think Anand was a little generous / reserved with ads. For the quality of content that was provided, I wouldn't have minded if he profited more. If the same quality persists, I won't mind more ads. Just keep the articles organized well, don't split sections between pages to display more ads, rather stick more minimalist ads on the side. I have Adblock disabled on Anandtech because the ads are minimalist, reasonable, and unobtrusive.

in other words: tread carefully, we're too smart, if you screw it up we'll figure it out quickly and leave even more quickly
Just trying to help you out.

 

[SickBeast]

Hi Joe,

I have been a member here for quite a long time now, however I stopped posting here completely for a number of years recently due to the forum's drastic delcline. This place has been taking over by viral marketers and trolls. A viral marketer was even made into a moderator at one point. A majority of the moderators here are absolutely terrible, the worst being Perknose who acts in a really brash and aggressive way with little to no social skills whatsover. The few exceptions are Harvey, Idontcare, and to some extent DrPizza. I'm sure that there are other decent mods as well but the bad ones have been so terrible that I have pretty much completely left the forum entirely.

If you would like some insight on how to improve this place and return it to its former glory, please feel free to send me a PM and I can help. This place was great at one point. Unfortunately it has declined into its current state to the point that Anand chose to sell the site.

IMO the moderators here need to be elected. The whole "elite" status is stupid. It's like a little boy's club. The entire process of mod selection is flawed. If you guys can fix that and get rid of all the viral marketers, this place will start to approach its former glory.




You think the rules have somehow changed about mod callouts?


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[soccerballtux]

How much did you pay for Tom's And Anandtech?

and why did it take you soooooooooooooooooooooo long to gobble up Anandtech after Tom's?

Tomandtech?
Anand's Hardware?
Tomanandtech's Hardware?

Obviously, Anand cared more for quality. There comes a point when dollars are very cheap and other things are much more expensive...

 

[Jimzz]

I eagerly await Anandtech's transition to a revenue generating clickbait-and-RSS-feed based site which reprints press releases as articles.

They are already planning that as you can see here they bend over when the dollar bills get ruffled.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2411640

 

[soccerballtux]

I eagerly await Anandtech's transition to a revenue generating clickbait-and-RSS-feed based site which reprints press releases as articles.

Apple was a trial run, now purch is poised to propel Anandtech to the next paradigm of pointless clicking full throttle.

 

[soccerballtux]

I really hope you guys address the issue of not being able to post babes outside of the babe thread.

I actually really liked this.

 

[soccerballtux]

You won't believe this one simple trick for responding to questions about clickbait. It will blow your mind! I'll take you through 11 example posts from the 80's with amazingly cute cats who can't even.

Seriously, I can't even tell you how much we hate this crap. The editorial guys mock each other when/if the titles get too Buzzfeedy, so it's something we watch and guard against. You should not expect this to happen here, because, like I said, we all hate this.

then why is that par for the course at Tom's Hardware?

 

[soccerballtux]

This is something where I'd like to see improvement as well. I did bring it up with Anand a couple of years ago, but given his hectic schedule he didn't exactly see it as a top priority, so things never got anywhere.

I've been trying to be active on the forums (mainly on the storage sub-forum, though) to the extent that my time allows, but the forums would definitely benefit from deeper editor integration. Unfortunately, we tend to be quite short on time and it wouldn't be fair to force anyone to participate in forum discussions (especially as we get paid per article, so anything that doesn't contribute to an actual article is time away from our free time). However, I'm sure there is a lot that can be done to improve things from where they stand today.

I'd just like more readers to be aware of the forums (linkage) so as to benefit from their comments and expertise.

We should probably get someone to revamp the BB design, it's awfully messy...

 

[soccerballtux]

I don't understand the reason for this.
If the site claims to be self-sufficient financially (and even growing), why would you want to sell it? I guess it could be worth a few millions to someone, so perhaps the owner of the site needed a new luxury house or something?

Also, someone explain why would anyone want to buy a site like this. There is some revenue from ads (which everyone blocks and noone clicks on), right? So you waste millions on buying the site, and then you have to pay the staff that comes with it each month to get all the lousy profit from ads. That doesn't make sense.

What's even more puzzling is why would anyone buy several sites like this? That cannot be profitable.

Currently they're one of the most well regarded and influential technology review sites on the internet. Exploiting this potential slowly would be profitable, for a time. I just don't think they realize how little time it would take for people to catch on if it turns into Tom's Hardware.

 

[pyonir]

One thing that strikes me about this forum is how dated it looks. It really needs a refresh.

Thanks for the input!

If there is traction for this, it should go to at least a community vote. A refresh just for the sake of a refresh is exactly what you said you wouldn't do:

we’d be bonkers to try to fix what isn’t broken.

or any other euphemism for screwing something up that works for the sake of change itself

I know you were just thanking blair for the input and that in no way means anything will change, but wanted to offer a counter opinion on it right away.

I like the forums the way they look. It's simple. I'm not bombarded with graphics all over (I have "Show Images" turned off), and a clunky format. Is it mobile friendly? I have no idea, I don't access the site over an tablet, notebook, phone or any other mobile device. Does everything *have* made for mobile first and the rest of us have to deal with the terrible look? That's a bit off topic, so I'll end my diatribe here.

My only point in posting was to say that refreshing the site simply because it "needs a refresh" is something other sites do and it almost always makes them worse and angers the users that built the community in the first place. /soapbox

 

[maddogchen]

Welcome my new Overlord....

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile
We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile
We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile
We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile

 

[jpishgar]

I know you were just thanking blair for the input and that in no way means anything will change, but wanted to offer a counter opinion on it right away.

You got it! And no need - baseline feedback about requests for changes is being heard, but there's no way it could currently be considered. If change happens, it's going to be the community entire that pushes it, and with ample feedback and input and opportunity for point, counterpoint, and analysis.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

Are you going to add a ton of javascript to the site like Tom's?

 

[VirtualLarry]

and why did it take you soooooooooooooooooooooo long to gobble up Anandtech after Tom's?

They had to save their pennies... AnandTech is like an Apple device, it cost more. LOL.

 

[olds]

As a former Moderator and still an Elite member, I have been receiving a stipend of $5000 a month. Is there any talk of raising this amount?