And NBR is dead!

[Sandy Bridge]

I also suspect TechTarget has basically been ignoring NBR and its sibling sites for years, not spending anything more than the bare minimum to keep the servers on.  One of the indicators is that NBR never went HTTPS, despite Google and other search engines implementing significant penalties for unencrypted sites in search results a few years ago.  In a world where search engines drive traffic, adding https was a bare-minimum feature in order to stay relevant.

Does anyone remember how NBR became part of TechTarget?  I don't remember whether it was independent or already part of Tech Target when I discovered it in 2007.

[Custom90gt]

4 minutes ago, Sandy Bridge said:

I also suspect TechTarget has basically been ignoring NBR and its sibling sites for years, not spending anything more than the bare minimum to keep the servers on.  One of the indicators is that NBR never went HTTPS, despite Google and other search engines implementing significant penalties for unencrypted sites in search results a few years ago.  In a world where search engines drive traffic, adding https was a bare-minimum feature in order to stay relevant.

Does anyone remember how NBR became part of TechTarget?  I don't remember whether it was independent or already part of Tech Target when I discovered it in 2007.

I believe it was started by TT when they actually cared.  When I joined in '06 it was under TT and they did have editorial staff and did pretty good reviews.  You're right about it going down hill, Charles put in reasonable requests (in my eyes) such as getting HTTPS and the like but it never happened.  It was basically Charles single-handedly getting them to keep the lights on for the past couple of years. 

[joluke]

Did Charles join any forum? Or you are the only mod that came @Custom90gt?

I'm glad we have you here with us! Personally Im happy to have other resources in terms of information on laptops and other hardware. 

But yeah as you mention @Custom90gt, TT let themselves go downhill. I have a lot of their websites in RSS and was an avid reader of their news and reviews and so on but they simply stopped posting editorial stuff. The only site that was active was the forum afaik and even the forum was practically dead if it wasn't for a couple of daily usuals like @Papusan and @Mr. Fox and many others. But I'm happy to see you guys around again and hopefully together we can make this forum and others prosper

 

[Custom90gt]

7 minutes ago, joluke said:

Did Charles join any forum? Or you are the only mod that came @Custom90gt?

I'm glad we have you here with us! Personally Im happy to have other resources in terms of information on laptops and other hardware. 

But yeah as you mention @Custom90gt, TT let themselves go downhill. I have a lot of their websites in RSS and was an avid reader of their news and reviews and so on but they simply stopped posting editorial stuff. The only site that was active was the forum afaik and even the forum was practically dead if it wasn't for a couple of daily usuals like @Papusan and @Mr. Fox and many others. But I'm happy to see you guys around again and hopefully together we can make this forum and others prosper

 

I believe a handful of us joined this forum because we still love laptops even if TT doesn't, lol. 

While I do agree the forum was slower than it was, it still was far too much for even a handful of mods to moderate at time, and there were always posts about the latest and greatest.  I'm hopeful that if anything came out of the downfall of TT, it will be some renewed interest in community.  And that certainly seems to have happened based on the last postings and the creation of these forums.

[Samir]

On 1/31/2022 at 11:05 AM, Prototime said:

I really wish they wouldn't have linked to reddit, the LTT forums, and Tom's Hardware forums to support the idea that "the community will live far beyond the TechnologyGuide sites." There are three successor forums that the community has built for the express purpose of keeping the community together, including efgxt. They should link to those.

Seriously--I think that was the biggest slap in the face.  I read those and was like wha?

But the more I looked at those links and started thinking, there was some sort of financial/business case for shutting all these forums down--potential lawsuits or other huge debt creating problems must have loomed on the horizon if they kept them open.  Maybe a big GDPR lawsuit?  Who knows...

 

On 1/31/2022 at 2:11 PM, katalin_2003 said:

For whatever is worth we tried to push for exactly this, Charles reached out to them in order to have the three forums on that page but, visibly, that request was also ignored..

Like I said in the original thread, I wish we could’ve done more.

You guys did a fantastic job in the face of everything.  Only pure selflessness and love for the community brings that.  You should be proud.

On 1/31/2022 at 2:15 PM, Reciever said:

If I ever meet you guys, goes without saying, first round is on me.

Ditto.  Second round on me.

On 1/31/2022 at 3:06 PM, Custom90gt said:

In the end, TechTarget didn't care at all what our moderator team thought or wanted.  Even just posting links to all those other places was a slap in the face for maintaining their forums. 

And this has got to be a sore point after all the time and effort put in.  But that work wasn't for naught because like a phoenix this site rises out of the ashes...

[Ionising_Radiation]

Truly the end of an era. I've removed the forum from my bookmarks and Tapatalk. At the very least, I'm glad that we have a very good archive here, as well as one on the Wayback Machine by the Archive Team; maybe we can see if we can run a CDN-run archive, see how we can get funding for that. 

[Reciever]

I have been thinking of a kind of subtext for the forums, not sure if anyone would like it/care for it. So I kept it to myself.

 

Old standards, new era

 

Also we have a few more of the old guard posting here so be sure to spread the love guys!

 

Honestly it's surprising to hear the NBR staff be so candid. I'm sure in some ways it may be a bit of a relief to be able to air your grievances.

[Samir]

7 minutes ago, Reciever said:

I have been thinking of a kind of subtext for the forums, not sure if anyone would like it/care for it. So I kept it to myself.

 

Old standards, new era

How about--New nice forum, Same great community.

[Reciever]

Just now, Samir said:

How about--New nice forum, Same great community.

Because we still have a lot of work to do lol

[Mr. Fox]

I don't understand how or why any US Company would need to care one iota about an EU GDPR lawsuit unless they wanted to do business on EU soil. Otherwise, I would be like "bite me EU" as they have zero jurisdiction in or over the United States, its citizens and US-owned companies. If Tech Target isn't doing business there, then I wouldn't think the forum being open to members from the EU should have any bearing. It's their choice to join or not join. Likewise, they are not subject to laws and regulations of the United States, as we have no jurisdiction over them.

[Samir]

57 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

I don't understand how or why any US Company would need to care one iota about an EU GDPR lawsuit unless they wanted to do business on EU soil. Otherwise, I would be like "bite me EU" as they have zero jurisdiction in or over the United States, its citizens and US-owned companies. If Tech Target isn't doing business there, then I wouldn't think the forum being open to members from the EU should have any bearing. It's their choice to join or not join. Likewise, they are not subject to laws and regulations of the United States, as we have no jurisdiction over them.

Except this is where the legal waters get muddy.  Supposed there is a user in the EU that somehow has their GDPR rights violated unbeknownst to the site owners and files suit in the EU.  Because there are relationships between the EU and US as far as judgements, etc, if a EU judge adjudicates the case in favor of the user, the user now has a mechanism to seek retribution from the US company.  It's a rare case, but the EU itself has done this against places like FB and google, so there's case law there already.

And for most companies this potential liability over something that doesn't necessarily swing the bottom line is nix the liability.

[Sandy Bridge]

IMO, the likely scenario is that NBR and its siblings were either not profitable anymore, or not profitable enough, for what had become a large company.  Large companies, especially ones that are composed of multiple sub-companies and have Merger & Acquisition teams, tend to look at things through very high-level, bottom-line-and-margin driven viewpoints.  Read enough article on CNBC, and you'll see that these sorts of companies will discontinue one of their divisions because it only had a 10% margin, and they want their divisions to have 30% margins.  Never mind that a 10% margin is still profit.

It could also have been the case that NBR, as a division, was profitable as-is, but may have required server maintenance at some point that, at least once the cost of labor was factored in, made that no longer be the case.  To use an analogy from The Office, the Michael Scott Paper Co can make money as long as its costs never increase, but if its costs increase at some point, it's not viable any more.

[Sandy Bridge]

There also was - I would argue clearly - not a business vision for NBR at TechTarget anymore.  No reviews had been published since 2019; no notable new investments had been made in years.  At a larger company, if a division that is unprofitable or break-even wants to continue to exist more than a year or two, it needs to have a champion that believes in it and has a vision for it.  There didn't appear to be anyone who fit that bill at TechTarget, although we've read Charles was able to persuade them to keep the lights on - probably indicating it was break even/low-profit/a small enough loss to not be very noticeable.

I'm reminded of a local grocery chain that was owned by a large, diversified company, and had been for decades.  They lost a small amount of money every year, by the parent company's standards - a few million per year in losses.  The locals thought it was a great chain, but it was somewhat a specialty one, so most people only bought some things there, not all their groceries - maybe why it lost money.  Anyway, the grocery division's leader was able to convince them to keep it around, probably by appealing to the goodwill it brought the parent company's brand name, and to old time's sake.  But about a year after he retired, they announced they were closing the grocery chain.

I could see a similar situation having played out here.  Maybe there was someone sympathetic to the argument of keeping the lights on, but they left TechTarget last year.  Maybe TechTarget's profitability went down over the past few years and their bean counters started looking in more detail for what could be cut and saw a no-longer-profitable division.  We'll probably never know the answer for sure.  But having worked at a large, conglomerated company once (by way of acquisition of the company I worked for, not by choice), this seems a lot more likely to me than anything more dramatic.  Jobs and divisions get cut all the time at large soulless corporations.  It's why I prefer to work for small companies.

[Mr. Fox]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:25 PM, Samir said:

Except this is where the legal waters get muddy.  Supposed there is a user in the EU that somehow has their GDPR rights violated unbeknownst to the site owners and files suit in the EU.  Because there are relationships between the EU and US as far as judgements, etc, if a EU judge adjudicates the case in favor of the user, the user now has a mechanism to seek retribution from the US company.  It's a rare case, but the EU itself has done this against places like FB and google, so there's case law there already.

And for most companies this potential liability over something that doesn't necessarily swing the bottom line is nix the liability.

Yes, I am not saying it doesn't happen, only that it should not be allowed to happen. One nation willingly subjecting itself to the jurisdiction of another nation in the realm of civil justice is ludicrous and overreaching. The United States should not honor verdicts in EU civil lawsuits, nor should the EU honor civil suits adjudicated in the United States. Doing so is a bastardization of sovereignty. I would make an exception for products, goods and services a US company sells on foreign soil, because once that company has a presence there they willingly subject themselves to the rule of law in that nation. If they don't have a presence there and the products, goods or services are not offered locally, there should be no jurisdiction. 

I despise Facebook, Twitter and Google and would love to see them go  out of business, but they should not be subject to any regulations that apply in another nation when a foreigner chooses to register an account on the internet where the site owner and domain is US-based. If this becomes a serious problem and the national leaders remain feckless in blocking it, then those companies would be wise to take appropriate measures to block registration and memberships from outsiders.

Even criminal prosecution should only be honored if and when it violates United States criminal code, and it should be tried on American soil with the same due process it would have received if the crime were committed in the United States. The EU conviction should not be ignored, but it should be sustained only to the extent it violates US code and goes through the same trial process and is decided by a jury. That is usually not an issue because the really serious violent crimes are illegal in all civilized nations. The exception would be if the crime is committed in the EU and the suspect is apprehended while in the EU or extradited for prosecution in the EU (where such an agreement for reciprocity exists). One example of this would be a violation of Sharia Law when the act is not illegal in a nation that does not observe Sharia Law.

 

On 1/31/2022 at 10:36 PM, Sandy Bridge said:

There also was - I would argue clearly - not a business vision for NBR at TechTarget anymore.  No reviews had been published since 2019; no notable new investments had been made in years.  At a larger company, if a division that is unprofitable or break-even wants to continue to exist more than a year or two, it needs to have a champion that believes in it and has a vision for it.  There didn't appear to be anyone who fit that bill at TechTarget, although we've read Charles was able to persuade them to keep the lights on - probably indicating it was break even/low-profit/a small enough loss to not be very noticeable.

I'm reminded of a local grocery chain that was owned by a large, diversified company, and had been for decades.  They lost a small amount of money every year, by the parent company's standards - a few million per year in losses.  The locals thought it was a great chain, but it was somewhat a specialty one, so most people only bought some things there, not all their groceries - maybe why it lost money.  Anyway, the grocery division's leader was able to convince them to keep it around, probably by appealing to the goodwill it brought the parent company's brand name, and to old time's sake.  But about a year after he retired, they announced they were closing the grocery chain.

I could see a similar situation having played out here.  Maybe there was someone sympathetic to the argument of keeping the lights on, but they left TechTarget last year.  Maybe TechTarget's profitability went down over the past few years and their bean counters started looking in more detail for what could be cut and saw a no-longer-profitable division.  We'll probably never know the answer for sure.  But having worked at a large, conglomerated company once (by way of acquisition of the company I worked for, not by choice), this seems a lot more likely to me than anything more dramatic.  Jobs and divisions get cut all the time at large soulless corporations.  It's why I prefer to work for small companies.

If I had to guess (and we have no information, so all we can do is speculate,) that would be my best wild guess. You probably nailed it with that one, but we may never know the real story.

[TR2N]

Absolutely shocking.

Still cannot believe this target company did this.

Shame on them ...

[Samir]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:37 PM, Mr. Fox said:

Yes, I am not saying it doesn't happen, only that it should not be allowed to happen. One nation willingly subjecting itself to the jurisdiction of another nation in the realm of civil justice is ludicrous and overreaching. The United States should not honor verdicts in EU civil lawsuits, nor should the EU honor civil suits adjudicated in the United States. Doing so is a bastardization of sovereignty. I would make an exception for products, goods and services a US company sells on foreign soil, because once that company has a presence there they willingly subject themselves to the rule of law in that nation. If they don't have a presence there and the products, goods or services are not offered locally, there should be no jurisdiction. 

I despise Facebook, Twitter and Google and would love to see them go  out of business, but they should not be subject to any regulations that apply in another nation when a foreigner chooses to register an account on the internet where the site owner and domain is US-based. If this becomes a serious problem and the national leaders remain feckless in blocking it, then those companies would be wise to take appropriate measures to block registration and memberships from outsiders.

Even criminal prosecution should only be honored if and when it violates United States criminal code, and it should be tried on American soil with the same due process it would have received if the crime were committed in the United States. The EU conviction should not be ignored, but it should be sustained only to the extent it violates US code and goes through the same trial process and is decided by a jury. That is usually not an issue because the really serious violent crimes are illegal in all civilized nations. The exception would be if the crime is committed in the EU and the suspect is apprehended while in the EU or extradited for prosecution in the EU (where such an agreement for reciprocity exists). One example of this would be a violation of Sharia Law when the act is not illegal in a nation that does not observe Sharia Law.

Yep, and the Internet in all it's unregulated connectivity has really caused a huge grey area because if this was a print publication the rules are quite cut and dry and very clear.  And that's one thing I think needs to be brought to bear on all the electronic publishers--liability that is equal to their print counterparts--it would keep their feet close to the fire so that when teenage girls commit suicide because of things your site published to them, the parents have very clear grounds for justice.  Right now, the legal loophole allows sites to literally get away with murder.  And the nation states of the world have noticed and have weaponized this into world war 3--which is being fought online in a perpetual cyberwar that is escalating every day.

There's a reason countries have borders that aren't penetrable.  Each country's Internet should be the same really.  There's no reason anyone should have russian and chinese hacking packets hitting their routers in the US.  We don't allow the same people to come and knock on your door without permission, do we?

 

On 1/31/2022 at 11:21 PM, Mr. Fox said:

You probably nailed it with that one, but we may never know the real story.

You know what would make a great article in a few years?  'The Last Days of the NBR Forum--Voices From the Inside' -- An article with interviews from those that were on the inside and what went on in the last days and the decline.  Someone could interview everyone now and then publish the article a year or so later on the anniversary of NBR going offline.

[mujtaba]

6 hours ago, Reciever said:

I have been thinking of a kind of subtext for the forums, not sure if anyone would like it/care for it. So I kept it to myself.

 

Old standards, new era

 

Also we have a few more of the old guard posting here so be sure to spread the love guys!

 

Honestly it's surprising to hear the NBR staff be so candid. I'm sure in some ways it may be a bit of a relief to be able to air your grievances.

TT is focused on B2B. In the last years, we didn't even have an intern allocated to us. It's sad because NBR had very high standards as a community. Even though I totally stumbled upon it looking to buy a W3J, I quickly joined the place and eventually joined the rank of the mods. At the time, we had two admins, one was Brian who was very good at the business side and Andrew who ran the technical side. They quickly got Charles on board as a community manager and the collaboration of the three made NBR as great as it was. After acquisition, however, we were thrust from from a small B2C site catering to a growing market to a small part of a big business on NASDAQ. Compared to a small company which is a burden of love and everyone knows everyone, big company politics and mentality is a very different game. We could complain more about TT but really, we would be wasting our breath. Let's work on trying to do our best.

P.S. Brian went and founded StorageReview.com which is an excellent place for all things storage.

[John Ratsey]

9 hours ago, Custom90gt said:

I believe it was started by TT when they actually cared.  When I joined in '06 it was under TT and they did have editorial staff and did pretty good reviews. 

My recollection is that it was started by Andrew Baxter and Brian. I joined NBR in April 2005 when it was rapidly growing and Andrew would accept and publish a wide range of reviews by forum members (who got $50) to supplement those he did himself. The quantity and variety, was in my view, a valuable supplement to standardised reviews and must have brought more traffic to the site. NBR was one of several sites (Brighthand.com, DesktopReview.com, DigitalCameraReview.com, NotebookReview.com, PrinterComparison.com, TabletPCReview.com) under the technologyguide.com umbrella. By 2008 a reviewer / editor (Jerry Jackson) had been hired. Jerry's email address changed from @technologyguide.com to @techtarget.com in 2013 so I think that's when the sale to TT took place. The reviews became less abundant which would tend to reduce the traffic.

[mujtaba]

1 hour ago, John Ratsey said:

My recollection is that it was started by Andrew Baxter and Brian. I joined NBR in April 2005 when it was rapidly growing and Andrew would accept and publish a wide range of reviews by forum members (who got $50) to supplement those he did himself. The quantity and variety, was in my view, a valuable supplement to standardised reviews and must have brought more traffic to the site. NBR was one of several sites (Brighthand.com, DesktopReview.com, DigitalCameraReview.com, NotebookReview.com, PrinterComparison.com, TabletPCReview.com) under the technologyguide.com umbrella. By 2008 a reviewer / editor (Jerry Jackson) had been hired. Jerry's email address changed from @technologyguide.com to @techtarget.com in 2013 so I think that's when the sale to TT took place. The reviews became less abundant which would tend to reduce the traffic.

I missed this comment. TechnologyGuide did not start as part of TechTarget. It was acquired in 2007 for $15M: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/05/28/story12.html

Based on what I remember, the founders were Andrew Baxter and Brian Beeler.

[Custom90gt]

Hah good stuff @mujtabaand @John Ratsey, it shows how much I've forgotten or not paid attention to.  I do recall TG running NBR years ago, but don't quite recall any "transition" to TT.  I do utilize Brian's website storagereview quite often though for the server, glad he's still doing something to help the techies out there.

 

@Samir, I do really like the idea of an article about the history of NBR and such.  I couldn't help, but the two old mods above could, and maybe Charles could chime in too, you never know...

 

[mujtaba]

I could tell you all day long about the trolls we had to ban. One guy asked for nuking entire Country_X and when I intervened, told me that his opinion is right and I am biased because I came from the same region. But at the moment I think we better devote time and energy to help this forum.

[John Ratsey]

I was invited to join the NBR mod squad at a time when someone, presumably with a grude to bear, periodically tried to hit the forums with porn spam so the more moderators, spread across different time zones, the better.

[Mr. Fox]

5 hours ago, Samir said:

There's a reason countries have borders that aren't penetrable.  Each country's Internet should be the same really.  There's no reason anyone should have russian and chinese hacking packets hitting their routers in the US.  We don't allow the same people to come and knock on your door without permission, do we?

We used to pay attention to that, but that responsibility has been surrendered to terrorists, human traffickers and drug cartels.

[saturnotaku]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

We used to pay attention to that, but that responsibility has been surrendered to terrorists, human traffickers and drug cartels.

A good many of them we the people have elected.

[Prototime]

         All of the Technology Guide URLs (not just notebookreview.com) are redirecting to the same forum closure page. TechTarget probably ignored Charles's requests to link to the successor forums out of pure laziness; it's (negligibly) easier for them to have a single redirect page for all their closed forums that link to reddit, LTT, and Tom's Hardware than to have a dedicated redirect page for NBR linking to efgxt, notebook-review and laptopreview.