Comments on: The Truth About Mashable

By: Divyang Patel

Divyang Patel — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:26:34 +0000

What an in-depth article this is! And speclially liked the comparison of K-mart V/s Wall-Mart. Learned one important thing : “Building brand in a niche is important”. Will try on my blog (though with limited resources at my disposal).
Can you suggest any brand building practice for small bloggers (or entrepreneurs for that matter!)

By: Murlu

Murlu — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:14:02 +0000

Thank you for calling out Mashable, it’s such a relief to see people that don’t fall over themselves because of the website.

I admit that I was caught up with checking Mashable each day, a few times, but eventually everything became disinteresting.

Mashable is often, as you said, the news channel that jumps on ever little story. There are countless [rumored] posts but what good does this truly bring the community? It often feels like a tabloid mag that’s talking about the latest celebrity break up.

The main problem is the substance. Everything you need to know about the story is pretty much summed up in the headline. Once you’re in the post, there isn’t much information that is very satisfying.

To be honest, I’m not sure how Mashable would be able to improve its content. It’s the TMZ of online media. It fits within its focus but I think if it were to go any more in depth (such as RWW) it would loose its touch.

I rather not bother with Mashable and stick with ReadWriteWeb, the content is very fulfilling and less gossipy.

By: Colin Alsheimer

Colin Alsheimer — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:57:53 +0000

Completely agree with your post. Personally, I too cannot keep up with the volume of content that they produce. I also think that that it’s (mostly) lowest common denominator content for the social and tech space. I often cringe when I see every single person in my Tweet stream tweeting about Mashable content.

Occasionally, I’ll find a good post that leaves me with something to think about, but it hasn’t happens in awhile.

I do dig that Pete commented on the post though, good for him.

By: Zahid Lilani

Zahid Lilani — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:36:25 +0000

I have been reading Mashable since 2006. In the beginning I really thought they were different from TechCrunch in many ways. The blog felt more personal. Now, Mashable is all hype. I did a story on my blog about Mashable’s re-tweet and shares disconnect pointing out that their enormous Twitter followers are mostly bots or people who have created numerous accounts on Twitter to feed their stream with Mashable’s RSS. On the other hand, their Facebook shares numbers are fairly low because 99% of the shares are done by real humans who read the post.

Mashable has some quality authors who I am sure will one day move on and do their own thing. Even Pete Cashmore is now writing for CNN and is moving on so what’s to stop all the others.

Once AOL buys Mashable, that will be the end of it as we know it because no one wants to read a media corporation’s blog which will most likely be biased.

Thanks you for your in-depth analysis.

By: @RaynaNyc

@RaynaNyc — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:33:58 +0000

At a time when harsh sarcasm and rude behaviour is becoming more common online, this has been a refreshing change, and reminder that intelligent dialogue and dissent can occur in social media (in the same conversation). I like the changes I’ve seen on Mashable’s website and how they’re trying to cover the ever changing social media /technology space but do recognize that this is an evolutionary process. For a while there, one new to Mashable would guess that it was an extension of Twitter, and we all know that there is a lot more occuring withith social media. Most important to me here is that Pete Cashmore is an active participant who seems to take a great interest in what his audience has to say about the Mashable brand, the services, and experience and like most successful brands they grow, change, err and listen. I won’t always be interested in what they cover, but I greatly admire the growth and improvement of the message and what they’re trying to accomplish in the community they serve.