What’s Your Opinion of io9?
Crotchety Old Fan wonders if Gawker mega-site io9 is disconnected from the rest of the genre blogosphere.
Well, yeah, because the genre blogosphere, by and large, is made up of fans and writers. Io9 is a business so their primary goal is (of course) making money. They do it through advertising dollars, so the more eyes they get to see them, the more they make. That’s why everything is “Amazing!” and “Unbelievable!” and that’s where the pr0n posts come from. So, yes, they have sensationalist posts because it’s good for their business. Are they disconnected from the fan blogosphere? They’re not even operating in the same domain.
Some may ask: if that’s your assessment of io9, why do you link to them? Well, it’s because they occasionally do post something I think is fun and/or useful. Those are the posts I think are worth checking out. Everything else is really just noise. I link to them because I do try to be diligent about giving credit to the source (something COF thinks io9 does not do, btw). So just think of us as your friendly neighborhood io9 filter.
Others have expressed…opinions…of io9 as well, most notably, Neil Gaiman.
How about you? What’s your opinion of io9?
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I think they’re more of a “mainstream” site hence the lack of dedicated coverage to the niche fantasy/science fiction book world.
I stopped following them in my RSS feed for the following reasons:
I find that SF Signal, SF Scope, and similar sites provide me what what I need without overloading me with useless posts.
I didn’t know that io9 didn’t link much to other folks, but I guess that makes sense since they’re in this primarily for the money and not for the love or anything like that. Again, that’s why I prefer this place to them.
By and large io9 is a decent site . Sure they feel a tad comercialized (and I do prefer more low key layout to a sf-themed blog(ish) site) but hey they’re do a fairly comprehensive coverage of their plot (if infantile at times). I don’t check them everyday but when I do I usually read a couple of articles, still I wouldn’t say that’s an indication that rest the site content is useless – just that I’m quite selective. As any themed site they bring in a voice (different perhaps but not of lesser quality) to a critical debate on the genre and for that I value their work, we all should.
They remain in my RSS feed, but I really skim their articles, and take anything said with a huge grain of salt.
The signal to noise ratio is admittedly poor.
I tried io9 back when the site was launched and then a few months later, but I’m just not interested. There wasn’t enough SFF book coverage and what was covered wasn’t done in a way that interested me.
So, I ignore it.
I follow Io9 in my Google reader and continue to do so, but I’ve considered unsubscribing more than once. At times it seems like they’re just throwing stuff out there, much of which is of little or no consequence. It’s the occasional post of real quality or insight that keeps me reading, though. I wish there was less crap, and more quality.
I’ve suspected from the begining that they had little actual love for the genre, and were just filling space with snark and snicker. In my unkinder moments, I suspect that it’s all just an excuse for another cool font on the gawker banner chain.
Roughly half of their latest headlines are openly derisive of their subjects, which would be okay if they were just covering Heroes and Fringe, but Watchmen? … Watchmen!?!
“Holy Crap, There’s a Giant Blue Man Behind All of You! RUN! [Watchmen]“
Can anyone find a post that shows true love of science fiction anywhere on that site? I think not.
Never really heard of them to be honest. Thanks for bringing them to my attention, complete with disclaimers.
“I haven’t denied that my Doctor Who episode “Faces in the Dust” will have Ice Warriors in it, because I’m not writing a Doctor Who episode called “Faces in the Dust” (which is a pretty rubbish title, who makes this stuff up?)”
Aha! He’s not writing “Faces in the Dust”. So he has already finished writing it!
I subscribe to feeds with worse signal to noise ratios than io9. But that doesn’t change the fact that I skip over half of their articles. I guess I’m just used to that with most of my feeds. I really don’t mind it when the ocassional good article is worth it. I think io9 probably fits that bill for me.
I’ve just been signed on as their ‘Research Fellow’ for the site, and the articles that I’ll be writing will be fairly in depth with several topics.
I’m a little biased, but I like the site. They tend to have some good information when it comes to upcoming media projects, and I’ve come across a number of really cool things from there.
I don’t care for many of the posts on io9, but they have had some good ones about books, which are my primary interest. I was disappointed io9 didn’t do a story about the painting of Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton that just sold at auction on eBay for $560. The painting depicts the Prince of Snark with a stack of ?flying saucers? on his head. Rumor has it the new owner will re-auction the painting and donate the proceeds to charity.
I read io9 as a distraction. It’s fluff, but keeps my interest with some of their content.
I used to read the site regularly, but every so often a piece would be posted that would make me sit back in my chair and go “waitaminute, what?”. And those pieces would later be debunked by people being cited in said pieces (the Gaiman bit above is a perfect example of that). That’s when I stopped taking them seriously.
Besides, why would I go to io9 when there’s SF Signal? (shameless plug)
@Charles: Great point about io9′s focus. In the introduction of Fast Forward 2, Lou Anders quotes io9′s Editor: “We don’t see it as a niche entertainment site. We see it as a pop culture site.”
@Jeff from Blue Moon Rising: I have to imagine that some of them must like genre, otherwise it would be a thankless job, wouldn’t it? How can you consistently and frequently talk about something for which you have no interest in?
@Jon: It surprises me that you haven’t heard of io9 given that their audience is so huge. Especially since you’re reading SF Signal and we do link to them. But glad I could help!
@Ausir: I think I just exploded in a puff of logic smoke.
@Andrew: Congratulations! I’d be interested to know how it is from the inside…
@Rob K.: I’ll take that shameless plug and raise you 1 inflated ego.
They’ve got some stuff that I like a lot – for example their monthly calendars of SF events – I’ve only discovered the upcoming ConDFW through their february calendar.
I think it’s fun at times, but they did something which I think is evil and that’s censoring a critical post of mine.
There was a very naive article which seemed to have been written by a kid addressing the author’s desire to have a new Superman film be as “dark” as the last Batman film. The word “dark” was used so much in the piece that it lost its meaning and didn’t make much sense to the Superman character. I wrote something politely summing that up and explaining what the character represents, and it got deleted.
I hate the ease of censorship on websites under the excuse that it’s privately owned. I look at free speech, being well constructed sentences which make sense, as a right and a duty which goes beyond ideas about private ownership. Of course you might disagree, but I’ll avoid places that can’t handle polite and intelligent expression.
A million miles wide, one millimeter of actual depth.
Let’s see…there’s the time they linked to a posting at SF Signal. Oops, except the posting at SF Signal was actually something from my site that SF Signal gave me credit for. But io9, for a site where people actually work for pay, couldn’t be bothered.
Then there was the article about the movie Quintet, directed by the late Robert Altman. They said it starred the late Robert Redford. No, it starred the late Paul Newman. a bit of a difference (overlooking the fact that one was NOT dead!). When this was pointed out to the posting author, by several people (including me) her reaction was along the lines of “What, you expect me to actually research what I write?”
Sure, if you’re being paid for the work…or even not. Twits. Gosh, with thirty seconds work with Wikipedia, I just found four links with information showing what was correct and what was not. I guess in the world of twitter and fifteen picosecond attention spans, even thirty seconds of work is too much for io9.
the vast majority of i09′s bloggers and the gawker empire as a whole are PAID writers. they get paid by the page views. i’m serious here. i read about how they run things over there a while back. i don’t know if it’s still the case, but when i read it, it was. they literally get paid by how many page views they get. quality has nothing to do with it. it’s strictly “get eyeballs on the page” stuff. and to be honest with you, i kinda like that. it’s always nice to have something different to read. you can’t have steak every night. sometimes you just want a big fat juicy burger to sink your teeth into. if you’re too serious about a topic you’ll end up being boring. they’re rarely boring. so yeah they obviously don’t do it for the “love of the game” as it were but they’re trying to make a living. and sue me, but i kinda like the variety in my life. can’t take things too seriously, especially when it comes to science fiction. am i right?
I really can’t stand io9 – and agree with most of the negative comments here already. It didn’t help that the site didn’t actually display properly half the time for me either due to the dodgy gawker engine i guess. I weeded io9 out of my rss feeds some time ago and have not regretted it.
SFsignal, SFscope and BDO between them, plus some author blogs like John Scalzi’s Whatever and Adam Robert’s several blogs keep me amused.
There was a reason I stopped reading it. It is because it is bad.
Only rarely do they post anything interesting.
The phrase “Waste of bandwidth comes to mind” to describe io9.
I glance at them from time to time. I thought they were great at first but the sheer overload of posts made me lose interest quick. I agree with the people who say it’s all flash and no substance but you can do a quick scan and see what the big stories of the day are. Though your links are far more useful.
I like io9. I look at it pretty much everyday skipping the stories that don’t interest me and taking what is said there with a grain of salt. It is a Gawker site after all. I don’t expect perfect accutacy. I do wish they would cover more books. But what can you do. It is what it is.
I was sorry to see Neil Gaiman get so pissed. I sort of understood why, though. They just should be very careful when they are stating a rumor to make it clear that it is, in fact, an unsubstantiated rumor.
Don’t know much about them. I don’t have them linked to my website.
Paul nailed my opinion to a ‘T’:
I’ve always felt that anyone working in the trenches of Nick Denton’s website empire deserves a wee bit of pity. They’re hired because they have some interest in the blog’s subject matter, but have to crank out stuff that brings in eyeballs. Eventually, their interesting and thoughtful posts are pitched out in favor of “Top 10 Wild Space Bikinis!” and its variations.
Like I told a friend not too long ago, I don’t trust io9, not as a news source, not as a cultural critic, not as anything. The fact that they kept shilling the recent “Flash Gordon” was proof enough for me.
A prime example of quantity vs quality. There is the odd nigget but it almost isn’t worth the time to slog through their mostly pointless posts to find it. I for one am happy to let SFSignal be my I09 filter.
As the others at SFSignal know, I dislike them tremendously. They are the ‘National Enquirer’ of SF blogs. Sure, sometimes these publications have something newsworthy, but 99% of the time they don’t. Instead, they play to the lowest common denominator, utilize heavy doses of sarcasm, and freely publish rumor or innuedo without stating it.
Even the things that are linked to from here I skip. My loss I suppose. The people who post there are far from journalist though – don’t get the idea that they are anything like that. Don’t expect fact checking, balanced treatment, proper sitation, or much integrity. In that way, they are much like SFSignal (I kid, I kid!)
I find them dishonest in some way, but I can’t say how exactly. It isn’t as if they hide the fact that they are pretty much all about making money and driving viewers, as John says above. I suppose this makes me a blog snob.
I liked the comment from Paul above that the ‘signal to noise ratio’ is pretty low.
I read them as more of a nerd humor site, rather than as anything serious. They’re silly, and about half the post are about TV shows which aren’t Lost, and therefore outside my range of caring. But they’ve done some great spots on SF-centric visual artists, and they do some fun lists. I’ve found more than a few strange indie films and odd books through io9 lists.
Basically, I get a small kick out of them from time to time, but I don’t really care about them enough to argue that other people should.
Hi there,
Thanks for talking about io9. I’m not going to comment on people’s opinions here, but I did want to clear up a few misstatements in the comments:
I did actually mix up Robert Redford and Paul Newman once. When people called me on it, I didn’t say anything about not being expected to research my articles. Instead, I made a joke about Redford and Newman being interchangeable in my mind, which ruffled some feathers. Sorry about that. It wasn’t a research issue in any case. I had the DVD box in front of me, and had just watched most of the movie in question. I just had a brain fart. It happens.
Yes, I posted a rumor about Neil Gaiman. I occasionally put rumors in “morning spoilers,” our daily roundup of entertainment stuff, and usually I’m very careful to label them as such and say “grain of salt indicated” or words to that effect. This time around, my wording was unclear. I did say “here’s a crazy rumor,” but people might have thought that warning only referred to another part of the item, not the Neil Gaiman part. When Neil Gaiman called me on it, I fixed it ASAP.
We link to tons of other science fiction sites. I hadn’t noticed that we hadn’t linked to SFSignal lately, but that’s probably just because nothing here has jumped out at me lately. I do read and enjoy SFSignal.
We are huge science fiction fans, and the fact that we’re doing this for a living is not necessarily any reason to discount our work, any more than it would be for your favorite authors or journalists at newspapers. (We’ve pretty much all worked in journalism before io9, and we got paid for doing it elsewhere as well.)
Thanks for reading io9, and thanks for posting such great content at sfsignal.
All best,
Charlie Jane w/ io9
I don’t read it regularly because as Paul said above the signal to noise is low. Sometimes they have an interesting post, and I’ll follow a link from elsewhere. Sometimes they post something really awful, in which case I will follow a link to it from elsewhere and feel bad about giving another hit to something bad in case it encourages them to write more of the same.
My opinion of io9: Waaaaaay too much content. When I actually have time to look at my RSS reader– which happens once every week or two– I get overwhelmed by their 50 posts a day and usually only read a few from the previous couple days. I do have them linked from my site, though, because 1-2 of those 50 is usually interesting and/or amusing. Their writers do sometimes tend to grind their personal axes, but so do I, so that’s not too big a complaint.
Occassionaly some good content appears, but the rampant commercialism, peculiar biases and too often schlocky attention needy writers really sour the broth. Most ranging from spam and ridiculously shallow plugs to downright sexist and crass. I got tired of seeing their silly fluff and NSFW garbage clogging my google reader. The worst being Charlie Anders who patronized here earlier. I don’t get how half of his posts qualify as journalism. I particularly am amused at his hollow attempts to disavow his lack of fact checking, commercial bias, poor taste, or any kind of professionalism. Scott Shaffer rightfully compared them to the National Enquirer but I see them more like Fox News. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. Pushing their own agenda, catering to advertisers, oddly downplaying important stories while stranglely focusing on others (again advertisers?), censoring commentors who disagree with them (I see my boyfriend was not the only one), and going on sites like this to do spin control when they fuck up. I just can’t trust it anymore as worthwhile news or criticism.
Io9 is the Gawker of SF. They should just call it SFGawker.