An Interview with RWW’s Richard MacManus
Kaila Colbin interviews Richard MacManus
Happy birthday, Charles and AltSearchEngines! I’m thrilled to participate in today’s post-a-thon. For my contribution, I got lucky enough to ask a few questions of Richard MacManus, the head honcho of ASE’s parent blog ReadWriteWeb. Read on for Richard’s opinion of ‘the voice of alternative search engines.’
KC: It’s been a year since ASE first started. What were your expectations for the blog, and how has it lived up to them?
RM: You never really know what to expect when starting a new blog, but the reason Charles and I started AltSearchEngines was simply to provide coverage for the hundreds of search engines that had arrived on the scene over the web 2.0 era (some before).
Charles first approached me about the Top 100 Alt Search Engines list sometime in Dec 06, if memory serves me. We published the first list in Jan 07 and it was a huge success, ending up as one of ReadWriteWeb’s highest rating posts of the year. So given the success of the list, and the passion and enthusiasm for these underdog search engines that I saw in Charles, a network blog seemed a natural extension.
KC: What have Charles and the blog done that you hadn’t foreseen?
RM: I think initially I had thought ASE would be a news and analysis blog about search engines, in much the same way that RWW does news and analysis of Web Tech in general. However ASE turned into a different kind of animal — it became very focused on the community of ‘Alts’ and Charles has literally become “the voice of alternative search engines”, as I called him at the recent AltSearchEngines Day.
So I would have to say that originally I thought ASE would be a consumer-focused news and analysis blog, a la RWW, but in fact it’s turned out different. But I’m very happy with how it’s evolved, because there are different and new ways in which we can take such a blog in the future — e.g. the forum I think is a key part of ASE going forward, because it’s a private place where the Alts can talk and plan amongst themselves.
KC: What has stood out for you as a highlight of the work Charles has done?
Definitely the passion and enthusiasm Charles has for alts. Those are two qualities I rate very very highly when I’m looking for new bloggers, and Charles showed them right from the start. It’s what makes ASE the ‘go to’ blog for the Alts.
KC: How do you see the relationship between ASE and RWW? Do they feed each other? Complement each other?
I think they are two very different blogs, but I still see RWW as the ‘mothership’ and ASE as one of our ‘children’. RWW is focused on Web Technology products and trends, which is a relatively wide brief (it’s still a niche topic in the grand scheme of media, but web tech has a lot of sub-niches and search engines is one of those). So in that sense RWW and ASE complement each other, as ASE is doing a deep dive into one of RWW’s sub-niches — in this case alt search engines.
But they are different. RWW is a news and analysis blog, and so many of our posts have a journalistic quality. We report news, in the opinionated way that blogs are famous for. And we analyze products and trends. ASE however tends to do less reporting / analyzing and more evangelistic style writing. Charles obsessively covers new alts and finds amazing new search engines, so it’s more like a discovery and evangelizing process. And I hasten to add, there is nothing wrong with ASE’s style — but it is different to RWW and last100 (out network blog on digital lifestyle). For that reason we generally don’t syndicate posts from ASE to RWW — because the style is too different — whereas we syndicate a good amount from last100.
KC: Charles writes some funny and cheeky posts. What has been your biggest ‘cringe moment’ with the blog?
RM: I would have to say the early posts when he mentioned you, Kaila! He was obviously being funny and cheeky, but it kind of made me cringe a little 
But seriously, Charles does have a lot of good old fashioned ‘character’, and so I enjoy his sense of humor on the blog.
KC: What do you see as the future for ASE?
RM: Both Charles and I have a lot of great plans for ASE, and our challenge now is just prioritizing them! But as readers will see from the posts Charles publishes over today (24 of them I believe!), there are no shortages of ideas on how we ramp up ASE. I am excited by where ASE is going, because it is a different business model than RWW. So all I can say to the readers of ASE is: stay tuned!!
