This is going to be a rather personal look at the past couple of months and how things have evolved since then.
As you may know, Softonic, the Spanish company that acquired Ghacks years ago, sold it in a rather hasty deal. The writing was on the wall for some time, especially since the budget for the site was cut in half more or less. This meant less articles written and it fueled the spiral downwards.
We, the writers, were not in the loop. One day in December, we were told that the site had been sold. Our access was cut immediately and the entire team was fired passively. Later, I was asked if I wanted to write a good-bye article, but it was already too late for that in my opinion.
Anyway, this meant that I stopped writing for Ghacks after nearly 20 years of doing so more or less every day. It was tough for Ashwin as well, who lost his main source of income.
There is little chance that the Ghacks situation is going to change in the future.
For now, these are the places that you can find my articles or takes at:
- Chipp.in, my personal blog: No ads, no tracking, tech news, some tutorials. I do not post as frequently as I’d like to.
- Weekly Tech Insights: a newsletter published once a week. I recently started to integrate longer takes on certain tech news, also has tutorials and other nice stuff. Totally free.
- Ask Woody Newsletter: I was approached by Will from the Ask Woody Newsletter some time ago and became a contributor. My plan is to submit articles to the newsletter regularly. Ashwin also started contributing.
- Gamestar Tech: This is the online tech section of one of the biggest German gaming magazines. Contribute daily tech news in German.
- Windows 11 Book: I have started working on the next revision of the book. Much has changed since 2024 and the book is in dire need of updating.
As far as personal sites are concerned, it is getting incredibly difficult to maintain them. AI tools are taking over, whether you like it or do not. More and more users will ask AI on search engine sites and elsewhere when they run into a problem or need an opinion or advice. This means less traffic to sites, which make less money as a consequence.
Many of my favorite tech news sites have vanished in the past couple of years. Google is changing its algorithm constantly and that usually means less visits. Yes, there are some holdouts, but even these face the problems.
You need to offer something that the competition or AI can’t bring to the table. And that is what I plan to do here. This site will never grow to Ghacks levels, as it is niche, not really indexed well in search engines. Means: only a handful of people will ever find it, unless an article gets suddenly pushed via a major Internet site.
My plan: grow slowly by word of mouth only, ignore search engines or AI, they are unpredictable. Build trust, never falter, never change. We will see how this goes.