Changes at MacNN and Electronista afoot - input sought!

Hey gang, Mike here -- MacNN and Electronista's new Managing Editor. Times have changed, and MacNN and Electronista haven't changed as we should have. Certainly you've noticed forum membership slipping from the heyday about six years ago.

My task, and I have chosen this mantle willingly, is to boost readership. Editorially, not much is going to change on MacNN, but you may see a cross-pollination of game industry coverage, if it has a relevancy. Alternatively, you can get it straight from the source at Electronista, if that floats your boat.

So, I put it to you:

What do you want?

What do you want to see, either on MacNN, Electronista, or both? We don't cover a great deal of THIS JUST IN stories, but would rather wait to get the story right in the first place -- a prime example being the India Philips AppleTV story from earlier this week. We waited to get some more information, then rolled with an accurate representation of events.

Oh, and We're hiring an app reviewer. I encourage you all to read the post, realize that it won't make you rich (but does pay more than just free apps), and apply!

Hope to hear from you soon

Mike

Have you thought about methodical content A/B testing? We can tell you what we want, but we may not be the traffic you are after - we are already here, after all?

We've got writers scattered all over the globe, and I think the smallest geographical separation between two of us is 950 miles. We're not Ananadtech with a core of products to test against because of it, and never will be.

Our reviews are of the "what will this do for you" variety, with limited speed testing, at least so far. We are going to run some tests with hardcore testing of some peripherals, so we'll see the uptake on traffic on that.

Yes, and we like you guys. We want more just like you.

What I can tell you is in the pipeline is way more "Hands On" features, like we did for PopClip earlier this week, and Destiny a few weeks ago. Reviews should pick up pace as well. If I had my way, we'd do 6-8 "Hands On" for apps and games a day, but we don't have the manning for that, just now.

We're slightly scaling back court coverage. Game coverage, with a hard focus on cross-platform titles, is going to step up.

Once upon a time, MacNN (and Electronista) were go-to places. There is way more competition in the space, but I think we can take back some of our readers that have been lost to attrition over time.

What I'm trying to say is, if you want to make us happy, sure, asking us what we would like is a good idea, but if you are looking to grow your audience I would suggest doing so other ways, and simply checking with us to ensure that these plans won't turn us away (unless this is a risk you're willing to make, which it may very well be).

What I mean by "doing so in other ways" is experiment: throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, pivot upon failure, fail fast, and have lots of analytics to determine which sort of articles generated the most traffic over a set period of time (beyond simply visits/hits, I would include your advertisement conversions, and perhaps interesting threads that come out of articles too). Out of all of the people I've ever spoken with in the content business, I've gotten the sense that predicting what sort of content will really be a hit is nearly impossible. I don't think any of us can prescribe a path for you that will generate lots of new traffic consistently, particularly given this relatively small sample size that is this community.

Believe it or not, I got all this from your first post. We have ideas, but there's nothing quite like crowd-sourced ideas, to see what you may not be able to see at first glance.

This isn't our only avenue for input :D.

More like Besson? Are you trying to give poor Glenn a stroke?

Sorry, I thought I wasn't being clear enough. I can't always tell when people understand me :)

You're just jealous.