Smashing Magazine has changed, will the trend whores also change?
Most, if not all, web designers know the notoriously popular site Smashing Magazine as well as its newly built network, the Smashing Network. Now, what made Smashing Magazine one of the most popular web design related sites out there is the great use, and even a bit of abuse, of the “listicles”, the list posts concept. They have not been the inventors of this concept but sure turned it into the trend it now is (in the web design world).
Trending and whoring.
Some brief Internet history. Once the Smashing Magazine concept took up and proved to be efficient and overtly performing (in terms of traffic hence in terms of revenue on advertisement), hundreds of clones started sprouting all over the place and, let’s admit it, started performing well too. The trend was on and the trend whores have been running around since then consuming, copying, listing, writing, “yes-manning”, “great listing” the content and the concept.
What goes up…
The major problem in all this ran around two major drawbacks.
First one, the popularity of such posts and the traffic generated has brought round a huge amount of link addicts. These are the people leaving two words to two lines comments on the posts, usually positive “great article” comments, just for the sake of putting a link to their own website either to catch link juice or to drive traffic elsewhere. This stiffled discussion and did not add value to the original article.
The other problem was that, at some given point, the whole thing started getting a bit cranky. Some of the lists posts were really light, no analysis whatsoever, just lists of, say, screenshots. I’m not a lists fan but I do read some of Smashing Magazine’s articles and some were really, really shallow. Worse, the other copying trend whores were publishing even shallower posts (I might even have one around in my own archives when I was testing what type of posts I would be publishing).
Setting the record straight.
I can’t say that it started out from there but Paul Scrivens at Drawar went back on how he launched Whitespace and how the concept caught up to be eventually made popular by Smashing Magazine. In this article, Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me), Paul explains how this concept slowly started breaking up the web design community. What I found great in it is the mature response of Vitaly Friedman, Smashing Magazine’s CEO, who stated that there were changes coming on the site.
Last month, in the opinion section of Smashing Magazine, Kari Patila restressed the point on the trends that are driving web design today, trends that seem to be depreciating the community.
Changes at Smashing Magazine.
Great changes are those that are not those that jump out at first sight but do great things. Has anyone noticed that the number of comments on the latest Smashing Magazine articles have suddenly fell from the usual 300+ comments (mostly “great posts” ones) to under a 100 mostly well discussed ones? Yes there are changes there.
The team at Smashing Magazine must have analysed of what was polluting the articles and have made 2 major changes. They have been promoting more content oriented articles while keeping some great well-written list posts but the best move I think is the pure and simple removal of comment authors’ website link in the comments. This gave no more incentive to link addicts.
Let’s talk about this…
How do you see this move? Do you prefer the new concept where there is serious discussion on the topics set forward in the articles?
Concerning the trend whores or copycats, do you think that they will be making the same move? Is this the opening of a new era in the world of web design blogging?
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I hate the sidebar being on the left.
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Mo habituer ek sidebar dans droite :S li faire bizarre … btw I dont read traffic whore sites (mashable and the like …)
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Tonn fini formater are web toi Bruno
. Bon be monn tester sa. General consensus pe dir sanzer dapre lord.
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NICE
I like the new look (home page) 
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Hi Sachin,
cool news discussion, I rarely keep in touch with Smashing Mag, to be honest. Just went on their site right now with the link you provided in your article. Really surprised to see indeed the “removal of authors’ website link in the comments”.
While, it’s true that link removal will encourage true motivated commentators only, I think it’s also a little bit unfair to them (the true commentators). May be they could have allowed to create a profile for each motivated commentator (I don’t really know how they handle their comment system).
But despite this ‘link removal’, the smashing mag do get many comments – a quick glance i see a range of 48-70
Another solution might have been a dedicated team to moderate/filter good comments based on some criteria and yet allowing author links. This is very much do-able since they can afford paying a dedicated comment team for that purpose.
What do you think?
//K_Wasseem
Yes, the comments are still here in great number but their quality has really improved and real discussions are taking over.
Concerning the “barbaric” way in which they shut down the link juice flow, I think that they had no other solution. Smashing Magazine does not seem to have had a commenter policy since even the Magazine team nearly never replied to the comments or interacted with the commenters. Their only solution therefore was to cut everything down to size.
Now they could have had a team working on comments and all that but once again, it comes down to building a commenter policy and investing but… the last news were that Smashing Magazine was broke and had to maximize its e-book sales.
Maybe they’ll get a real strong policy after some months/years.
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The “never replied to the comments or interacted with the commenters” suggests that this was only a one-win situation. It’s lame from smashing mag.. :S They were as if not cared about the ‘readers/commentators’, just with with ‘traffic conversion’.
Thanks for the reply and information Sachin.
Once I visit Smashing Magazine network blog speckyboy.com and I see a queue of list post contain only images and link. No explanation, or nothing else and good thing is, he earning good amount of money for this site, so he don’t need any changes. Good to see Smashing Magazine now changing their thought.
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I think that the SM network was based on the fact that the sites included in it are those which were on the same line. It might actually be the solution Smashing Magazine is rolling out, i.e. having a network of sites doing the lists while they themselves are going for more quality posts.
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Actually, Smashing Magazine was one of the first blog that ‘I’ read when I started off. I was actually really inspired by the listicles but well as I came to know more about blogging, I came to know what is right and what is wrong. It is good to see that Smashing Magazine has changed it’s school of thought
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Hey Shiva,
I don’t think that “listicles” are inherently bad and there must be a place for those along with good indepth articles on blogs but they have been overused to just make lists of all and anything just to drive traffic. Some SM authors do make great lists with great content but others just loaded them with all and anything.
Now, I’m openly not a fan of “listicles” but I do read one or two sometimes and as you put it, try to find the line between the good and the bad.
Welcome to the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius.
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Twitter: BlazingMinds
says:
First of all thanks for stopping by and commenting on Blazing Minds, that’s how I got to this post :idea: I have to admit it’s my first time here, but so far, looking good, as mentioned by one of your other commentators, the sidebar on the left is a bit strange, I tried that on my blog and my bounce rate really suffered, but on the right side, it improved, strange, but besides that, it’s an interesting blog
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Thanks for stopping by Karen. It seems that the general consensus is calling for a coming back to the right aligned sidebar. Weird that this has such an impact but it was just a test.
Hope that you find interesting things to read about on this blog.
Cheers.
Sachin
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Twitter: BlazingMinds
says:
Glad I could be of some help, I’m off to read a few of your other blog posts now ;-)
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Cheers Karen.
.-= Web Design Mauritius recently wrote: Google MAYDAY update is affecting long tail keyword rankings. =-.
I don’t see the sidebar on the left. For me it’s still on the right?
The sidebar was on the left and has been changed to the right since the comments Mark.
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