Mac users used to clamor for the latest processor news because there was no computer available which was fast enough; a 7,200 RPM drive had to be a big deal because everyone spent time waiting on their slow 5,400RPM drive. Digital photographers anxiously awaited better sensitivity, lower noise, storage speed, etc. but it's been years since a good phone camera was adequate for most people and even discerning types were more likely to be held back by skill or lenses than their DSLR.Even on HN, I'd bet most readers would take a LONG time to notice if someone secretly their Core i7 with an i5.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/26/8662905/the-verge-and-reco...
It reports 81M US visitors/month for the entire Vox network (https://www.quantcast.com/p-d9vfr8QTWnv1E) and 13M for The Verge (https://www.quantcast.com/theverge.com).
That actually lines up pretty closely, so it's likely they were talking about US visitors rather than global (which is ~2x for The Verge).
(Disclaimer: I used to work on Quantcast's measurement product).
Honestly I expected higher for The Verge but then again I'm an Ars guy myself.
Soon in tech news -"Why Western Digital Black and Red hard drives are actually increasing racism in america? See in those 48 charts that we have shown only 345 times"
They are very guilty of moreofthesamism
Vox is basically Fox News for liberals. Half troll, half entertaining articles.
The other issue is that millennials, especially technical and gaming are among the highest users of adblock which makes a material impact on ad revenue from the site. Either way, even doubling to 3M uniques per month is still a low number of overall users to sustain a single site.
It might work if part of a larger network, which is what will happen at Vox, but they seem to be hitting the saturation point too. Remember the Verge superbowl ad? It's nice to keep buying traffic and hiring writers as long as the VC money is there but it doesnt seem like they have sustainability figured out yet.
In any case, it's very interesting to watch how this unfolds.
Elite Daily is the perfect example of what the millennial generation is looking for. Shallow advice from fellow millennials with tech news sprinkled in with as much importance as think-pieces covering what it's like to be a millennial. Quantcast shows 30 million uniques for Elite Daily last month and that makes me think that it's going to continue to be difficult for tech-centric media to grow and gain sustained advertising dollars. I won't hide my disdain for fluff sites like Elite Daily, but my point is that Elite Daily is what these tech news websites are competing against, not each other.
My thought also. You can test this idea by replacing "tech" with finance, films, radio, farm machinary, mining equipment or any other money making sector of the market.
I often think of meta tech news as "news for tech-industry analysts".
The typical "person on the street" doesn't care about "tech" as an individual topic, nor for publications like Gigaom, TechCrunch, or ReCode. They'll take tech flavored news in their stream as it comes whatever the source (and folks like the BBC, CNN, the NYT, etc, all do a good job of it anyway).
The people who work in and live and breathe "tech" (e.g. us) and who do really care aren't considered to be "enough" for a mass market site. It's ridiculous a newish site with 1.5 million uniques a month is classified as "struggled to draw significant traffic" in an industry that employs around 6.5 million Americans in all. The "genericization" of tech media as mass market media is horrid - look at how insipid the stories TechCrunch covers nowadays, for example.
I think people need to rework their assumptions about what "tech" is, how it relates to the media as a whole, and to get used to the idea that tech-specific media is (and should be) almost (but not quite) as niche as media aimed at medical professionals, lawyers, people in aviation, or similar groups.