Huh. Never heard of There Gister.com before
Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
41–50 of 139 posts
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#42digg dot com, metafilter dot com, reddit dot com, craigslist dot com - all still around but I no longer go to them because they have changed so much.
It’s not 2006 anymore
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#43Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#44> 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.
You disagree, but even you admit that the old style was something you rarely, if ever, visited. So, when they try to determine what their users enjoy, what you enjoy won't get counted as much.
> Now I have zero interest in ever visiting it again.
You barely had any interest in visiting in the first place. You don't build a commercially viable product by catering to people who routinely do not use you.
You can disagree, but again, you didn't visit for years at a time, so it doesn't matter.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#45I used to visit it everyday from the early 2000's, but I don't think I have really visited in the last 3-4 years. I can't put a finger on it, but the writing and then subsequently the comments (which were always fun) kinda started falling off. I still have it in my bookmark bar, but as I still cant get the favicon to load properly in Firefox, I forget to click on it :)
Same here. Used to be a daily for me, then for some reason I dropped it and completely forgot about it until this post. Maybe around the time Digg imploded? I'm not sure.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#46Oh, interesting, I might have to start reading it. I used to read it back in the late 90s and early 00s but the tabloid style put me off
(I assume this is the .com is the same as theregister.co.uk -- the place that bought BOFH etc)
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#47Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs.
> what caused this transformation?
All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible.
The Reg has been going for 20+ years. We have to keep up with what people want. And yes, some people liked the 2010s era, some missed the 2000s era, but also many more thought we weren't taking journalism seriously. We do take it seriously (we don't take ourselves too seriously) and I'd hate for headlines to hold that back.
What's really changed is that we've styled the main headlines to be more accessible in every way, and still keep our sardonic, informed voice in stories and sub-headlines. We have a mix of core IT stories; software and open source; where life meets tech; science; and more, written in a way that gives our tech readers a voice.
If you haven't read us in a while, then yes, we've changed visibly. If you've been reading us for more than a year or two, the change will have been fairly gradual as we tune our headlines to match what people expect from an irreverent technical title.
> Has it been acquired by a conglomerate?
No, it's still independently owned, with owners who give editorial free rein. It's documented in UK Companies House.
> its original Chief Editor left in May 2019
No, you're thinking of an executive editor who left around then, who wasn't in a management position (think editor-at-large).
C.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#48Funny enough, I stopped reading the Register after a few attempts because I disliked its headlines and tone. "To each his own" I guess.
Funny enough, as a person whose native language is not English, The Register always went above my head. I knew it was meant to be snarky or funny, but it always left me stumbling and I never was quite sure if not the whole page was just an elaborate shitjoke.
Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#49Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
#50It certainly had an unconventional approach, which was considered a tabloid style (similar to the 'red top' newspapers in the UK, the sun, the mirror etc)
I believe Mike Magee who was one of the founders was responsible for this, and he was involved until he fell out with the direction it was going in the early 2000s, and went on to form The Inquirer, which was a similar publication (although long gone).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)
I guess over time The Register has morphed to try and be taken more seriously (in I imagine a rather competitive market), it hides it's original tagline - biting the hand that feeds IT