The fall of the Verge

[AustinIllini]

Remember when the Verge was about new technology? Those days seem long gone. Within the last 6 months, the Verge has expanded to Cars. That seems reasonable, as cars are likely the next stepping stone after IOC in terms of automation.

That being said, more and more, the Verge has been posting some strange articles. For example, this one,

Miley Cyrus just torpedoed her own career, and MTV helped

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/1/9235025/miley-cyrus-mtv-vma-2015-nicki-minaj

I don't understand, personally. The Verge is a Vox property, so why are they posting this garbage on a tech website? I wish they would put more time into "This is my next..." instead of wasting internet space with this filth.

Where do people go for tech news now? I have recently started enjoying the TWiT family of podcasts, as The Verge's podcast is now unlistenable drivel.

 

[cambookpro]

Ars Technica and Engadget seem to both broadly be still only posting tech news. I just tend to ignore most of the non-tech stories The Verge posts.

 

[deaglecat]

The verge still has its moments.

The vergecast was once gloriously irreverent but is now just a bit dull.

Deffo lost some of it's mojo. Shame Joshua went....

 

[Zirel]

Since the beginning of 2015, they have been digging deeper and deeper.

This attracts viewers, however.

And they must have received a lot of money from Google with that huge Ad, and those blatantly pro-Google, anti-Apple and anti-Microsoft articles.

 

[east85]

Honestly, I thought the same thing when I saw that pop up in my Twitter links on Safari. That isn't The Verge I've seen grow over the years. If Vox wants a general news website, why not utilize the one they already own? Vox.com..

 

[pika2000]

I stopped going to the Verge years ago. Other than the great product photos, their contents are usually razor thin. Even their product reviews are very light-weighted, and are not much better than those hands-on videos on youtube. Added with their increasingly pompous attitude, I was done. Good thing we have this thing called the internet and choices. Engadget is better.

 

[Rogifan]

The Verge is all about clickbait. If they still had high quality articles and writers they wouldn't have needed turn comments off.

 

[rhett7660]

I can say, this will be the last time I tune into the Verge for coverage of any event. I felt like I was in high school with the comments they were throwing around. Horrible. I actually left the feed half way through. I haven't been to the site in a very long time.

 

[decksnap]

The greatest irony of the verge was their recent article about how bad mobile web browsers are and that they need to be fixed. Sites like theirs, with huge overhead and dozens of ad scripts and trackers, are what is wrong with the internet.

I'm all for equal rights, but they also have a strange feminist bend to them. Like, there's a new 'look what this woman did (did we mention she's a woman)' article every couple days. Nothing wrong with that really, just out of place to me.

 

[Quotenfrau]

Miley Cyrus is a very annoying attention whore. Don't read press who writes about her.

I like Slashdot http://slashdot.org/
It's really old school

 

[Rogifan]

The greatest irony of the verge was their recent article about how bad mobile web browsers are and that they need to be fixed. Sites like theirs, with huge overhead and dozens of ad scripts and trackers, are what is wrong with the internet.

The worst thing about that article is the article itself didn't match the headline. The headline was the mobile web sucks, but the contents of the article were just whining about Apple not allowing different rendering engines on iOS. I'm sorry Nilay, that's not why the mobile web sucks.

 

[boast]

I see The Verge as a bunch of writers who write about tech because that was the industry that was hiring. So this slow shift into pop-culture is inevitable.

 

[rhett7660]

The worst thing about that article is the article itself didn't match the headline. The headline was the mobile web sucks, but the contents of the article were just whining about Apple not allowing different rendering engines on iOS. I'm sorry Nilay, that's not why the mobile web sucks.

Exactly. This article sounded more like a ranting/bitching session aimed at Apple then the mobile browser industry as a whole.

 

[decksnap]

Exactly. This article sounded more like a ranting/bitching session aimed at Apple then the mobile browser industry as a whole.

Their website is the heaviest, slowest website on my list of visits. Once I found out that more than half of that was so that they could track my online behavior, that's when my head exploded.

Frankly, without the comments turned on, it's not that enjoyable. Used to be you'd read an ill-informed article (see above) and then read the users hashing out a rebuttal in the comments. Now it's just reading ill-informed articles.

 

[arn]

Gizmodo went through the same change. At one point, growth stalls and if u want to keep growing, you have to expand your audience.

 

[Jessica Lares]

The Verge doesn't feel nerdy. That's why I still like it. It's not always open in my browser like it used to be, and I don't have it in my Safari Subscriptions now, but I still probably check it at least three times a day.

And I'd rather read Re/code compared to the rest of the others too. They both have the better layout and don't feel blogish and more like general news websites.

I just don't read the stuff I don't want to.

 

[decksnap]

Unless I missed it, their just-released review of iOS 9 conspicuously does not mention the new content-blocking feature, which is pretty big news. It will also give Nilay exactly what he asked for, a much improved browsing experience on mobile Safari.

 

[benzslrpee]

they just decided to focus more on other content areas attract a very active readership in terms of commentary. there was / is a good chance that anything you see trending on Reddit that is politically / socially edgy would turn into an article on The Verge. it makes sense as far as growing their business.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Anandtech and ars technica.