Metafilter gets a mention in The Guardian

December 6, 2015 10:03 AM

The article is In Search of the a European Google" and the salient quote is: "A third, Google, can kill a profitable business by tweaking its search results: just ask the founders of Metafilter, who lost 40% of their visitors overnight in mid-November 2012."
posted by dfriedman to MetaFilter-Related at 10:03 AM (15 comments total)

The report of our death was an exaggeration.
posted by Mitheral at 10:13 AM on December 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

Most other reports are also exaggerated though so whatevs.
posted by aubilenon at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2015

MetaFilter: so whatevs
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:44 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

the founders of Metafilter

Mathowie is large, he contains multitudes.
posted by zamboni at 10:51 AM on December 6, 2015 [15 favorites]

Mefi's own Granuiad
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 10:52 AM on December 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

My sense, having started a company in San Francisco with a partner from Ireland, is that it's easier in Silicon Valley to get money as kids with a neat idea but no track record. None of the founders of our company even had degrees, yet we were still able to raise tens of millions. That's not something that would have happened in, say, Germany.

Maybe it's changing, but it seems like a cultural thing that probably has a lot of inertia.
posted by ryanrs at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2015

I hereby pledge never to correctly spell the name of that newspaper again. But I may do my own variations, like Guranaid or Darnigau or DurAgain.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:43 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nurd-gaia?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:19 PM on December 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Turd Ferguson.
posted by valkane at 2:44 PM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Mefi's own Granuiad Grauniad
posted by Going To Maine at 4:24 PM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's always a little weird to me seeing these mentions of the site as a sort of crystalized doomed-in-the-moment touchstone for folks talking about internet finances and ad market stuff. Like, I get why it happens if it's something that fits the larger point someone's making, and in a lot of cases it's a genuinely sympathetic sort of reference—here is that good thing that got the bad end of circumstance—but it's also strange seeing that distance and dissociation from the actual site as a thing that's persisted and recovered some in the time that's passed since then. For a lot of folks, their awareness of MetaFilter seems to basically end at "ad revenue crashed, site was destroyed".
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:54 AM on December 7, 2015

Mitheral: The report of our death was an exaggeration.

As were the reports of our profits, but reporting on deaths and profits are more exciting than "gravely wounded" and "chugging along comfortably."
posted by filthy light thief at 8:54 AM on December 7, 2015

"undead shambling"?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:09 AM on December 7, 2015

their awareness of MetaFilter seems to basically end at "ad revenue crashed, site was destroyed".

They also speak in hushed whispers of the Night Of The Long Knives when the Cabal* threw out the Old Order. Long live the New Flesh!


*the Cabal would totally have done it if there were a Cabal but there is no Cabal
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:25 AM on December 7, 2015

“Really, it’s engineered to make a point.”

*sigh*
posted by chavenet at 10:33 AM on December 7, 2015