The Silicon Valley Hypocritic Oaths

It would appear that some our Silicon Valley Tech darlings are still struggling with this New Meedja thing, and a few oaths are being sworn by people who should know better....

I've always been amused by Chris Anderson, Wired's editor, writing tomes on Free economics while continuing to flog his magazine, books and speaking time for cold hard cash. Do what I say, not what I do, is the mantra and Guy Kawasaki hoist him on this petard nicely at SXSW this year (see above YouTube video).

But now it would seem Wired magazine is being swept away by the theses he espouses.

...Mr. Anderson has yet to solve the equation for Wired. Under his editorship, the magazine is an editorial success, winning three National Magazine Awards last month, which tied it for the most honored magazine. And Mr. Anderson’s own profile is higher than ever, thanks to his books, which roll messy business trends into neat canapés that executives pass around. He gives 50 speeches a year for an estimated $35,000 to $50,000 apiece.

But that has not equaled success for Wired in the downturn. The magazine has lost 50 percent of its ad pages so far this year, ranking among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter. Only Portfolio, which Condé Nast shut down last month, and Power and Motoryacht fared worse.

That leaves Mr. Anderson, who makes his living promoting big ideas, trying to come up with one big enough to reinvigorate Wired’s business.

As the NYT article quoted above notes, Wired is being hoisted by its editor's petards.

In 2006, Mr. Anderson published “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More,” arguing that the Internet allows for the sale of an array of niche products rather than relying on blockbusters. In “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” which comes out in July, Mr. Anderson proposes that businesses can profit from giving some products away rather than charging for them.

From a business perspective, Wired is being hurt by both those phenomena.

Similarly, Peter Thiel (founder of Paypal, funder of Facebook) has rounded on Valleywag as being the "Al Qaeda" of the Valley. Not that they have flown any planes into Sand Hill Road you understand, more that they have flung outrageous stones and arrows at the investments of the VC's

Thiel is hardly alone in trying to turn tech blogs into a rah-rah chorus. There is now an entire media ecosystem dedicated to disseminating CEO and investor spin. Thanks to Thiel, anyone who questions the publicist-approved message can now be labeled a terrorist. Whatever: Valleywag will continue to be a place that prints the truths that others are too polite to say out loud.

We at Broadstuff Towers have been told more than once that if we just turned ourself into a PR Repro-machine we could make more (OK, some) money out of the blog. But we do this for Love, of course, so you the reader can enjoy our intelligent scepticism and sharp wit

Postscript - the point of this post was not really to take a few shots at individuals, but more to expose two trends I see as quite strong in the Silicon Valley Ecosystem:

- The fervent espousal of things that others should do, while not doing them oneself. At its most cynical its the process of getting others to do work as part of a collective spirit while the espouser runs away with the loot. Open Source, UGC and various tribes and belief systems all have some of this going on.

- The PR machine ecosystem, as Gawker outlines - the force of spin from the Valley is incredible, you see it if you are in Tech but not of the Valley.

Forewarned, with examples, is hopefully forearmed.