The Punctuated Equilibrium of Valley Tech Magazines
There's a debate in evolution between those who believe in gradualism and those who believe in punctuated equilibrium. Read more about it here, but essentially the question is whether evolution works little by little or in fits and starts. It's not quite at the level of Mac versus PC, but a contentious issue nonetheless.
In business, there is little doubt. With each economic cycle downturn, only the fittest companies survive and the rate of business failures grows disproportionately high. There is no gradualism in the business cycle, companies just try to survive downturns until everything gets good again. Depending on the particular market segment, many don't.
On the bright side, many shouldn't. Economic downturns are good for getting rid of weak competitors with less stable business models and management teams who made poor decisions (like leasing Class B real estate at $120 per square foot per year). And in the vacuum left by their departure new companies can get built, learning from the mistakes of the previous generation.
I write this because I was looking for a story about a certain technology company earlier today. So I visited Red Herring, only to find a site with no new content and lots of dating service ads and pop-ups. The magazine itself shut down in February. So I went to Upside, only to find a change of address form hosted by IT Buyers (whatever that is). Shut down too. We all know the story of The Industry Standard, eCompany was merged into Business 2.0 and Salon's going under any day now. Sounds like punctuated equilibrium to me.
What's most interesting to me, however, is not that all of these once major technology magazines and websites are gone, but that I am getting more timely and insightful information than ever without them. Much as the removal of a key predator allows new species to develop and thrive, everything from mainstream media outlets (which can once again hire talent who previously wouldn't work without stock options) to blogs is filling the space.
We are now in the most interesting point of the cycle for new development, the media equivalent of the Burgess Shale. I would note that this is the same point in the economic cycle into which Wired and Red Herring were launched about ten years ago. The most recent cool new media source I've found is Technorati's Current Events monitor, which is exactly the product that Google should launch with the Blogger team. And as Dave Sifry (Technorati's creator) told me, this is just the beginning.
