$26
My dad came to this country with something like $26 in his pocket; $26 and a scholarship to UMASS. I didn't know about that until I was around 14, our family went to another family's house for dinner and it came up in after dinner conversation. I was honestly floored - all of the sudden everything in life made sense to me, I was given the drive that I needed to go anywhere and do anything in life. My dad took essentially nothing and raised a family out of it; we all helped, but one man's ability to do that is what I truly define as successful. We weren't rich, but he (along with the help of my mom) made sure that we could live in comfort as a family. My dad is what sparked my drive; he's the reason that if I get a product to review on Friday, and the review has to go up on Monday, I bust my ass all weekend to make sure it gets done. He instilled in me a true understanding of what hard work is really about, and that's a major cornerstone of who I am today.
My mom gave me an understanding of how to do something with myself and an understanding of ethics. She showed me what truly caring about something really meant, about what being selfless meant and gave me the foundation that allowed me to develop my own perspectives on the world. She didn't teach me right from wrong, she taught me how to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And I'll never forget that which she's taught me to this day. It wasn't until college that I really understood what she had done for me; she dropped out of college to take care of me, to raise me. She gave up her dreams of being a doctor, to live her new dream of having a son. She cared for me more than anyone ever could, and seeing and understanding that also helped shaped who I am today.
I started AnandTech almost exactly 8 years ago: April 26, 1997. I was a freshman in high school, 14 at the time, and completely into this stuff. I started AnandTech not as a business, but as something that I thought would be cool to do. I started it humble, and to this day I will never forget my beginnings. There's no room for big egos in writing, I hate reading it and I'm sure you all do too.
I started the website with nothing, it was a free site on Geocities and I had no hardware other than the scraps of my system. But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. I've had one basic principle when it comes to how to deal with those readers, and it goes something like this:
Regardless of how many people come to the site, I look at it as each person coming to me with their money in hand, wanting to know what to purchase. Let's say the average hardware upgrade costs $150, that's 6 million people x $150. I don't have to let you know that that's an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. To trade the trust that you all are placing in me and my staff for any amount of anything, is just unfathomable. While I'm sure there are folks that do it, I am not one of them.
At the same time, if we didn't value your trust so highly, we'd be gone in an instant. AnandTech readers make their buying decisions based, in part, on our articles. If we gave some bad advice that resulted in a poor purchase, do you think we're going to keep those readers for long? Nope, common sense right?
Next let's talk about this myth of articles and exclusivity. To a journalist, an exclusive on an article is a huge deal, because it means that you'll get all the attention about this one topic. Yet another reason why I hate journalists, they are far too short sighted. One thing I learned very early on (and you'll notice this in the work I do) is that being first to break a story gives you a large influx of short term traffic, but does nothing for you long term. You can have all the exclusives in the world, but if your content is crap then they mean nothing. At the same time, you can be 3 weeks late to review something, but if it's the most thorough review out there, that review's overall impact on reader perception of you and your site is much greater than having an exclusive. Now if you can get a review out first and make it as thorough as possible, then you're sitting pretty.
The next part of the myth of an exclusive is this idea that manufacturers have any desire to give one site an exclusive over another - that simply doesn't happen. Any of the "exclusive" articles we've done over the past 8 years have been made possible through going through third parties. I reviewed the K6-III about 3 months before AMD even shipped the review samples, did AMD work out a sweetheart deal with me? Of course not, I went around the manufacturer. It's what I did for the SLI preview from last year, it's what we do to get company roadmaps. We avoid dealing with the manufacturer at all costs, unless we need to talk to their engineers.
It's true that manufacturers try to bully a lot of sites out there, generally speaking the smaller you are, the more the manufacturer tries to influence you. I fought very hard to build AnandTech to where it is today, and it is at the point where manufacturers do not even *dare* try to even hint at trying to influence anything. All of the major manufacturers have done their own independent audits of AnandTech, they know how large we are and the type of influence we have - do you think they'd risk a story about how they are trying to strong arm the media into reviewing products a certain way?
"But what about the advertisers?" you say, well, I took care of that problem long ago. AnandTech as a company doesn't have a single sales person on staff, years ago I set things up so that we wouldn't have to deal with advertisers and to truly build a separation between editorial and advertising. The results of this are numerous, but the two major ones are:
1) I like my editors to be autonomous, they receive a little direction from me and help if they need it, otherwise they are on their own to do and review anything you ask for and they see as important to the areas of coverage. They are never told what to review or how to review it; honestly, if this weren't the case, you all would see right through it.
2) I rarely know about what ads are going live on the site unless I either see them while browsing the site, or in my CEO role someone from the sales side brings one up to discuss. Honestly I'm far too busy to even bother with that sort of stuff; you guys follow the blog, there's no time for me to be running around working on ad stuff. I've got people to handle that, they do their job and we do ours.
Advertisers will sometimes ask for preferential treatment, if they ask our sales folks directly - they are turned down on the spot. Sometimes they will go around them and talk directly to an editor, if they do, the editor makes it *very* clear that we don't work this way - case closed. I've got tons of emails of this kind of stuff, and as I mentioned before, by now about 99% of the manufacturers don't even try this sort of crap. They know where it's going to get them and that I take it very personally. The remaining 1% are folks that haven't dealt with us before, they'll learn soon enough. Do others have this separation? Most don't. Does that mean anything? I can't speak for them, but I can speak for us and this policy works for us. Do you have to be an advertiser to get a review? Of course not, anyone who reads this blog should know that if you all want to see us review something, we'll do it - all you have to do is ask :)
"But what about the free hardware?"
Manufacturers also know that we have no problems buying hardware, if they refuse to send us something, we'll just go out and buy it. I've had manufacturers refuse to send us products for a full year, but did you all notice? Nope...we just went out and bought everything. That's another philosophy of mine: you come here to read about technology, not about some soap opera and crap that goes on behind the scenes - so I keep things like that off the site. When there are problems with manufacturer relations, I don't post about them here, I deal with them maturely and in a way that doesn't affect the outcome of reviews. Manufacturers also know this, they can say whatever they want to me, about me, etc... but it still has no impact on our reviews. If company X calls me stupid, does it make sense for me to hurt *all of you* by giving an unfair/incorrect review of their product? A lot of these issues are just plain common sense :)
AnandTech is a business - we do make money, but regardless of how large we get and what our revenues are, it's still run like a family. And this family has morals, I can't speak for how other people were raised but this is how I was raised and it's how I run my family.
My dad came to this country with something like $26 in his pocket; $26 and a scholarship to UMASS. I didn't know about that until I was around 14, our family went to another family's house for dinner and it came up in after dinner conversation. I was honestly floored - all of the sudden everything in life made sense to me, I was given the drive that I needed to go anywhere and do anything in life. My dad took essentially nothing and raised a family out of it; we all helped, but one man's ability to do that is what I truly define as successful. We weren't rich, but he (along with the help of my mom) made sure that we could live in comfort as a family. My dad is what sparked my drive; he's the reason that if I get a product to review on Friday, and the review has to go up on Monday, I bust my ass all weekend to make sure it gets done. He instilled in me a true understanding of what hard work is really about, and that's a major cornerstone of who I am today.
My mom gave me an understanding of how to do something with myself and an understanding of ethics. She showed me what truly caring about something really meant, about what being selfless meant and gave me the foundation that allowed me to develop my own perspectives on the world. She didn't teach me right from wrong, she taught me how to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And I'll never forget that which she's taught me to this day. It wasn't until college that I really understood what she had done for me; she dropped out of college to take care of me, to raise me. She gave up her dreams of being a doctor, to live her new dream of having a son. She cared for me more than anyone ever could, and seeing and understanding that also helped shaped who I am today.
I started AnandTech almost exactly 8 years ago: April 26, 1997. I was a freshman in high school, 14 at the time, and completely into this stuff. I started AnandTech not as a business, but as something that I thought would be cool to do. I started it humble, and to this day I will never forget my beginnings. There's no room for big egos in writing, I hate reading it and I'm sure you all do too.
I started the website with nothing, it was a free site on Geocities and I had no hardware other than the scraps of my system. But I worked hard these past 8 years, AnandTech grew from nothing to where it is today - with over 6 million monthly unique readers. I've had one basic principle when it comes to how to deal with those readers, and it goes something like this:
Regardless of how many people come to the site, I look at it as each person coming to me with their money in hand, wanting to know what to purchase. Let's say the average hardware upgrade costs $150, that's 6 million people x $150. I don't have to let you know that that's an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. To trade the trust that you all are placing in me and my staff for any amount of anything, is just unfathomable. While I'm sure there are folks that do it, I am not one of them.
At the same time, if we didn't value your trust so highly, we'd be gone in an instant. AnandTech readers make their buying decisions based, in part, on our articles. If we gave some bad advice that resulted in a poor purchase, do you think we're going to keep those readers for long? Nope, common sense right?
Next let's talk about this myth of articles and exclusivity. To a journalist, an exclusive on an article is a huge deal, because it means that you'll get all the attention about this one topic. Yet another reason why I hate journalists, they are far too short sighted. One thing I learned very early on (and you'll notice this in the work I do) is that being first to break a story gives you a large influx of short term traffic, but does nothing for you long term. You can have all the exclusives in the world, but if your content is crap then they mean nothing. At the same time, you can be 3 weeks late to review something, but if it's the most thorough review out there, that review's overall impact on reader perception of you and your site is much greater than having an exclusive. Now if you can get a review out first and make it as thorough as possible, then you're sitting pretty.
The next part of the myth of an exclusive is this idea that manufacturers have any desire to give one site an exclusive over another - that simply doesn't happen. Any of the "exclusive" articles we've done over the past 8 years have been made possible through going through third parties. I reviewed the K6-III about 3 months before AMD even shipped the review samples, did AMD work out a sweetheart deal with me? Of course not, I went around the manufacturer. It's what I did for the SLI preview from last year, it's what we do to get company roadmaps. We avoid dealing with the manufacturer at all costs, unless we need to talk to their engineers.
It's true that manufacturers try to bully a lot of sites out there, generally speaking the smaller you are, the more the manufacturer tries to influence you. I fought very hard to build AnandTech to where it is today, and it is at the point where manufacturers do not even *dare* try to even hint at trying to influence anything. All of the major manufacturers have done their own independent audits of AnandTech, they know how large we are and the type of influence we have - do you think they'd risk a story about how they are trying to strong arm the media into reviewing products a certain way?
"But what about the advertisers?" you say, well, I took care of that problem long ago. AnandTech as a company doesn't have a single sales person on staff, years ago I set things up so that we wouldn't have to deal with advertisers and to truly build a separation between editorial and advertising. The results of this are numerous, but the two major ones are:
1) I like my editors to be autonomous, they receive a little direction from me and help if they need it, otherwise they are on their own to do and review anything you ask for and they see as important to the areas of coverage. They are never told what to review or how to review it; honestly, if this weren't the case, you all would see right through it.
2) I rarely know about what ads are going live on the site unless I either see them while browsing the site, or in my CEO role someone from the sales side brings one up to discuss. Honestly I'm far too busy to even bother with that sort of stuff; you guys follow the blog, there's no time for me to be running around working on ad stuff. I've got people to handle that, they do their job and we do ours.
Advertisers will sometimes ask for preferential treatment, if they ask our sales folks directly - they are turned down on the spot. Sometimes they will go around them and talk directly to an editor, if they do, the editor makes it *very* clear that we don't work this way - case closed. I've got tons of emails of this kind of stuff, and as I mentioned before, by now about 99% of the manufacturers don't even try this sort of crap. They know where it's going to get them and that I take it very personally. The remaining 1% are folks that haven't dealt with us before, they'll learn soon enough. Do others have this separation? Most don't. Does that mean anything? I can't speak for them, but I can speak for us and this policy works for us. Do you have to be an advertiser to get a review? Of course not, anyone who reads this blog should know that if you all want to see us review something, we'll do it - all you have to do is ask :)
"But what about the free hardware?"
Manufacturers also know that we have no problems buying hardware, if they refuse to send us something, we'll just go out and buy it. I've had manufacturers refuse to send us products for a full year, but did you all notice? Nope...we just went out and bought everything. That's another philosophy of mine: you come here to read about technology, not about some soap opera and crap that goes on behind the scenes - so I keep things like that off the site. When there are problems with manufacturer relations, I don't post about them here, I deal with them maturely and in a way that doesn't affect the outcome of reviews. Manufacturers also know this, they can say whatever they want to me, about me, etc... but it still has no impact on our reviews. If company X calls me stupid, does it make sense for me to hurt *all of you* by giving an unfair/incorrect review of their product? A lot of these issues are just plain common sense :)
AnandTech is a business - we do make money, but regardless of how large we get and what our revenues are, it's still run like a family. And this family has morals, I can't speak for how other people were raised but this is how I was raised and it's how I run my family.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
72 Comments
View All Comments
gnumantsc - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Anand,A lot of sites do hardware review not for the love of the readership, but more for getting the chance to keep the hardware. I mean those sites do have to offer some preferential treatment in order to get new stuff all the time.
I do software reviews for my site its a small one but nonetheless, if they give me a free copy or I test their trial version it isn't a difference to me. I offer my opinion and even offer suggestions on nice to have features. If they implement it great, but I never ask for credit for improving their software, nor do they ever say thanks.
I bet The Inq's article about hardware sites got tons of hits because whether they mentionned you indirectly or not, sometimes an article like that makes them a "quick buck".
I would love to see my articles published on a popular site just as this whether or not I make a dime off of it, but you are lucky Anand to have such high readership. I would love it if I had that opertunity. (If I ever get my Linux site up)
Oh and if you don't like the intelliTXT ads, just suggest to your readers that the site only works in FireFox that'll solve the problem :D
Scott Smith - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Anand, the problem was not that your tests aren´t real-world (even though some of them could be calledexotic), but rather that you focussed more on benchmarks that gain a great deal from DC than those
that don´t. The end result is what I described. I´m
looking forward to a complete review in a few weeks/months. I still don´t know which applications from your standard testing suites can benefit from DC and which can´t, e.g. is Winrar multithreaded? What about compiling? Power consumption of the 130W parts as opposed to the single 95W part you tested, and so on.
Keep up the good work, I hope we won´t have to wait for affordable DC Athlon 64 parts until 2006 as you seem to suggest, so that we´ll also see some competition in that market.
Scott
Creathir - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
It is WONDERFUL to hear about the news submission service. That will be very cool indeed.I'm so glad you agree with the IntelliText ads... maybe someday they can be done with. I suppose you could do like certain articles on the Internet suggest and sell out to the manufactures...? ;-D
Obviously they are an attempt to be like Google's AdSense technology, maybe you guys could develop something like that your advertising agency could use? Maybe ads could be listed on one of the side menus as being "relative". Just a thought. Keep up the good work!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Scott SmithAs I mentioned in the review, I had little more than a weekend to get the article done. So that meant I had to cut some things out, primarily: PC WorldBench which takes around 7 hours to run.
My multitasking tests were created based on feedback from the AT readership, as I mentioned in the article. As far as single threaded benchmarks go, anyone who has followed our articles already knows that single threaded application performance doesn't improve when you move to dual core. Despite that fact, I still included Winstone and SYSMark, both mostly made of single threaded apps and in part 2 I addressed gaming performance as well.
The gaming tests that you refer to in your post were asked for by our readership, which is why I ran them (in addition to single task gaming benchmarks). I felt two single task gaming benchmarks were enough to show, as I mentioned, that gaming performance didn't change from single core to dual core. Remember that this is just a preview and thus can't be expected to have our full test suite in it, our full microprocessor review when the chip is released will be accompanied with a much more complete test suite - but you cannot ignore multi-tasking performance. It's like if we reviewed a SMP workstation and only tested single threaded performance, that's not what readers of that review are interested in.
I also don't believe it's correct to refer to only the old tests as being "real world." I think if you asked the readership, a large number of them would find that the multitasking tests would be more representative of real world usage models for them; maybe not with the same applications, but generally very similar.
As far as not testing Half Life 2, it's difficult to do because every new release of half life 2 breaks our custom-made benchmarks so we have to re-make them. The game count has been reduced simply because I'm retooling our benchmarks for use with some of the newer games that have been released, and retiring older ones.
Take care,
Anand
Scott Smith - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Hi Anand,let me summarize the problem:
You used to have a standard benchmark suite for CPU testing. That one was obviously still great for the launch of the 6xx series. Now that INTEL sends out dual-core preview samples in a PR strike, you start creating boatloads of "multitasking" benchmarks that range from realistic to silly, effectively creating a showcase for INTEL, designed to show the maximum effect dual-core CPUs can bring, but you do not present several of the (previously) standard tests that (probably? impossible to tell since you didn´t publish them) show no improvement at all from dual-core, all these tests that would show a faster single core as the better solution. It´s not hard to see what impression that creates. The overall picture becomes distorted, and if INTEL wanted to showcase their products (in the way manufacturers do), they
would do what you did.
In essence, usage patterns haven´t changed overnight from the 6xx launch to the DC preview. It´s not like we´ve all become freaks overnight that play games at 25fps just to have some 10 other tasks running in the background. Where did all the real-world tests go? What happened to the standard testing suite?
------
On another note, even in your standard testing suites, I´ve noticed that you´ve reduced the number of games tested to about 2, while presenting several pages of professional workstation applications that often cost thousands of dollars to own. You´re not even testing Half-Life 2 anymore, probably the most important game out there. Just how representative do you think is that choice for your readers? Think more about what is relevant to the majority of your readers.
All criticism aside, your site is still the best out there, which is the only reason why I took the
time to write this up.
Regards,
Scott
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
leatheredThis deterioration that you speak of has happened numerous times over the past 8 years. The one thing I noticed is that the sites that deteriorate, don't make it. There are tons of sites that used to be semi-popular 4 years ago that aren't even a blip on the radar today. The same will be true 4 years from now.
This community is very self regulating, if people don't trust you, you'll be gone before you know it. And the larger you get, the more eyes you have watching over you.
There's a lot I could tell you about what's happened over the past 8 years. I've got enough to write a novel on, and who knows, maybe that will be my going away present to everyone 10 years from now when I finally throw in the towel :)
I will say this: the absolute worst that happens today behind the scenes amongst hardware sites isn't nearly as bad as what things used to be like. The problem is that a lot of sites these days grow up with the wrong role models, or get involved in the community for the wrong reasons. I won't point fingers or name names, but I will say that I will always do my best to show you the clear and impartial path. I'd say the number of bad sites today is lower than in the past, if you can believe that. There's a lot of pretty bad stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but as someone who has watched this community grow - I'm not worried.
Believe me when I say that I do my best to keep manufacturers in check. If I get wind that they are trying something sketch with anyone else, I let them know that it's not acceptable by any means and I take it as high up as necessary.
As far as manufacturers openly bribing, honestly I haven't even been offered such a thing in about 7 years. Like I said in the blog, manufacturers quickly learned not to try that crap with us. It's always an interesting story to hear about so and so doing this for money, but often times a lot of it is just childish rumors. Remember high school? A lot of what you hear is just like rumors spreading in high school. Silly, no?
Creathir
I'm not a fan of the intellitext ads either, that's why I campaigned for the ability to turn them off. It's a tough balance to strike, we need ads to keep the site running and to grow the staff, but honestly they are distracting. If I could find a way to do away with them while still grow the company, I would do it in a heartbeat.
As far as news goes, the news staff isn't regulated the same way as the editors are. We let them have a little more fun like that ;) But don't worry, soon we will be introducing a slashdot-style news submission system that will make sure that you, the reader, get more of an input on what you'd like to see on AT :)
Take care,
Anand
Creathir - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
A couple of things...I have been visiting Anandtech on literally a daily, if not multi-daily basis for at least 6 years, if not 7 (kinda hard to remember back that far). I have always looked up to the staff of Anandtech as a sou-... no, the source for reliable information in regards to the computer industry. It always amazed me that someone could bring such tremendous information to so many people. (Think about it, Anandtech articles, for the most part, are easy to read from a perspective of having NO knowledge on a topic to quite a fascinating read for people with a more technical knowledge.) The articles always have captured my interest and kept me well informed about current trends and such in the industry.
With that in mind, I would have to say the only time I have ever felt the ads had gone "too far" would have to have been when they started putting the IntelliText ads on the site. I kinda feel like its an intrusion. I know you can turn it off, but I still think its in poor tastes. The only "bias" I have ever noticed would have to be the news guys and their obvious distaste of Microsoft. They are human though, and entitled to their opinion.
Anand, I love the site, I'm envious that I didn't come up with the idea first, and look forward to reading more to come.
leathered - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
I feel I have to defend Charlie here, expecially with carrying the guilt of submitting that article to slashdot :)I've been following Charlie Demerjian's articles ever since he started writing for the Inquirer and have great respect for what he has to say. On many occasions he has talked about how hardware firms often attempt to bribe him into writing favourable reviews.
I feel his article (rant) was born of frustration at what I can only be described as a deteriorating situation in the world of hardware reviews with a only a *few* exceptions (AT included). He article seems to be firing in all directions and I don't believe AT was a specific target, despite some /. gossiper's interpretation.
Anand, I admire your restraint in your comments, but I would admire you more if you would confirm what I and many others believe, being that the *majority* of the countless hardware review sites are corrupt, dishonest or plain incompetent; especially the latter.
I purchase computer hardware for a living and I find AT an invaluable resource for information. However I would be a fool to rely on AT as my sole source. But when an increasing number of sites are turning out reviews which have more holes in them than a swiss cheese, I keeping asking myself, who can I trust? This is why I feel you should go on the offensive to differentiate yourself or risking having yourself associated with them.
All the best an keep up the good work.
MemberSince97 - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
Anand, Thanks for your candidness, I bought a California Graphics Photon 100 not 1111, based on your recommedations way back then. It was the biggest POS for K6III ,I'm still here. I remember the BBS would die every six (weeks ,months) and my post count would have to start again and again and Again...lol . I still trust this site more than any and it will always be my home for the latest and greatest.Bob
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 6, 2005 - link
One more thing: I appreciate everyone's show of support, but let's not turn this into a bash-fest of anyone else out there. That's not the reason why I posted this and it's definitely not what I'm about.Thanks again guys :)