Richard MacManus

@ricmac
3.9K Followers
854 Following
5.4K Posts
Tech analyst @ https://agenticweb.news · Internet historian @ https://cybercultural.com · Founded ReadWriteWeb (2003–2012) · 🥝 in 🇬🇧
Personal websitehttps://ricmac.org
Newsletterhttps://agenticweb.news
Internet history bloghttps://cybercultural.com
Richard MacManusJun 5
Show threadRichard MacManusMay 9
Now they’ve discovered external style sheets.
Richard MacManusMay 4

1/x On Friday, I ran a personal poll asking whether you are open to seeing AI content from me in your feeds. The results pleasantly surprised me, and a couple of commenters also gave me a path forward here.

Firstly, re the results. Not a large sample size, but good enough: 57% said Yes (even if some of those were anti-AI in general). Even better, only 20% of poll responses were a resolute No. Honestly, I expected that to be much higher given most of the AI discourse here.

Richard MacManusMar 1

Thanks to @jaz and the @teamtoot team, I’ve upped my laptop sticker game (the other stickers were courtesy of @andypiper a while ago). #TootWales

P.s. happy #StDavidsDay to all.

Richard MacManusFeb 28
@jaz opening the #TootWales event this evening in Cardiff, at the scenic Glamorgan Cricket Club.
Richard MacManusJan 27
This book spoke to me today at my local indie bookstore. No idea why… #AIculturalstagnation
Richard MacManusJan 23
Visiting Bristol on a day off is like catching up with your heavily tattooed friend.
Richard MacManusJan 22
My employer, The New Stack, has just moved from Title Case to Sentence Case in its headlines (i.e. lower-case instead of capitalizing). I hadn't really noticed before, but most of the tech news sites in our orbit do the same — The Verge, TechCrunch, et al. It actually does seem more easy to read headlines and scan them on a homepage with Sentence Case. I'm thinking about making this change on Cybercultural too. The big traffic question: does this help with Google Discover? Any #SEO folk know?
Richard MacManusJan 16
Had a day off today and went to Hay-on-Wye (the UK’s book town) with my daughter. I managed to find a 2006 web design book, packed with screenshots. Anyone else a fan of the “Web Design Index by Content” books? #WebDesignHistory
Richard MacManusJan 6
Just checked my Google search traffic stats, and boy this is becoming grim for web publishers: Clicks Per Impression for Cybercultural is down to an all-time low of 0.37 (was as high as 2.24 in mid-2024). BUT search impressions is at an all-time high, and still climbing as I continue to post new articles. The problem, as the chart with the blue line shows, is that click-thrus flatlined last year and in December began to dip again. This will only get worse this year, as AI Mode really kicks in.