They had a great formula. Used to get some good scoop, a humorous spin whilst having a decent level of factual accuracy.
Sadly, they now need to compete with social media and memes, the newer generations of internet user treat websites as a secondary source of news and entertainment.
Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
31–40 of 139 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#32I noticed the change right around the time they stopped having a distinct landing page for "theregister.co.uk", which I preferred because of their slightly more provincial bent, and instead started redirecting everyone, everywhere to "theregister.com".
It's sad, because much of its appeal was precisely how different they were from common IT coverage that was and still is mostly written for non-IT types.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#33Example of the previous editorial style: https://web.archive.org/web/20190410065314/https://www.there...
An actual example of the previous editorial style: https://web.archive.org/web/20050428082501/http://www.thereg...
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#34The Register used to be required reading for BOFH. More oriented to folks in the UK, but I used to enjoy this series. If you have some time to kill check out some of the articles.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#35> Does anybody know what caused this transformation?
Maybe this?
> I used to visit The Register almost every day up until a few years ago.
Years of not going
> I visited it again a week or two ago,
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#36Mike Magee was co founder of the Register and established its style. He left in 2001, and the Register has been declining ever since.
I really felt that when Larry the janitor left in 1998 is when the decline started.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#37> Does anybody know what caused this transformation? Maybe this? > I used to visit The Register almost every day up until a few years ago. Years of not going > I visited it again a week or two ago,
Do you mean that the "old" style didn't make it commercially viable, and the "new" one does?
I would disagree. At least before I would visit it intermittently whenever I remembered it existed. Now I have zero interest in ever visiting it again.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#38Sad to see it turn this way.
Now if we want to tounge-in-cheek tech humour, we are left with. . . techdirt.com?
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#39Andrew Orlowski! He writes for the Daily Telegraph, which is the UKs equivalent of Fox News. Everything is uphill from there
The Sun is the UK equivalent of Fox News.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#40They had a great formula. Used to get some good scoop, a humorous spin whilst having a decent level of factual accuracy. Sadly, they now need to compete with social media and memes, the newer generations of internet user treat websites as a secondary source of news and entertainment.
So their solution to that shift in their market is to become more stodgy?