iFranky

When reading The Blog Herald today¹, I was struck by the article A Hardcore Spanking, Web 2.0 Style. In the article Andrew G.R.² discusses how he became the victim of several platforms, for not reading the ToS. And hits at the same time out at being an early adopter.

But I do not see a link between suffering the bane of being an early adopter and getting banned for not respecting the rules, guidelines.
Early adopterism has been the topic on this blog before, and even nowadays, in my days of blogging retirement, I continue to be an avid tester of applications and spam my colleagues with any new service I discover and like. Around 3% of the stuff I test. My Holy Shit Tools.

And sometimes, I realize I better had waited before switching, before implementing a new, beta service in my daily workflow, as the Chyrp experience has shown me once more.

Never though have I been banned from a site, been confronted with a restriction other than my own stupidity. Not because I was an early adopter.
Honestly, I would be happy if Twitter made the decision for me that following more than 2000 tweeps is insane is. Then again, probably I am not interested enough in everyone’s lifestream.

1. Even after my problogging past, I still stay interested and follow the fewest blogs about blogging. I still read several Splashpress Media blogs. [↩]
2. Disclosure: I have blogged on several blogs Andrew blogs on now and think he is a fun and snarky writer. [↩]

Second, on the issue of community - I don’t know how to respond to this exactly. The problem isn’t that our community is growing. The problem is that growth, by definition, leads to the degradation of a community. The wingnuts arrive, and the trolls take up residence. Our challenge is to find a way to engage a larger audience while keeping the interest of our core readers. That may be impossible - and someday I may spin myself out of TechCrunch and start a new blog. The topic - new startups.
[Crunchnotes]

Michael, do it. Do it now.
The stealth way. Give yourself 6-9 months time and write as you did at the start of TC. Go the uncov way after all the TC experience you gathered.

Together with the community gathering the trolls, your crew also did. Don’t get me wrong, I love Duncan, I’ve been reading Duncan for more than 3 years now and always will continue, but people like you, people like Ted, people with inside knowledge or extended coding knowledge, should go solo again.

And if you do, screw the echo chamber Techmeme-osphere, you’ll be surprised of the following you could gather within only some weeks.

TC, the magazine, works well and does its job, now it’s time for hardcore opinions again.