The long-rumored news comes from The Verge: TUAW.com is closing as of Feb 2. I didn’t like all of what they did there, but there was a solid group of writers and people that I will miss reading.
AOL is shutting down The Unofficial Apple Weblog, better known as TUAW, sources familiar with the situation tell The Verge. The company — which is also shutting down its gaming site Joystiq — is in the midst of a major reorganization, and is cutting back on media properties it deems as underperforming.TUAW’s run comes to an end on February 2nd.
TechCrunch, which originally reported the news of AOL’s restructuring, noted that tech and lifestyle sites would most likely be affected by the changes. AOL decided against selling TUAW, leaving open the possibility it could resurrect the site in the future. But for now, a team of writers and editors are out of jobs.
Aol’s TechCrunch puts a different spin on it saying that it will be folded into Engadget – which might mean current content gets redirected.
While Verge earlier today reported that both tech were being closed, this is not quite accurate: Joystiq will stay on as a separate channel at Engadget, while TUAW content will be folded into the bigger site, we understand. It’s still being decided whether the two brand names will remain.
I’ve heard separately that pageviews were in a slow downward spiral over the past few years and the site became too small to justify being a separate unit against slowing ad revenue for AOL. In any case, it is always sad to see some good Apple writers out of a gig.
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I used to like TUAW way back, but the site got really annoying, and it’s been off of my Apple bookmarks list for some time. That being said, this is still sad. I don’t like that TUAW / Joystiq are being shut down. That being said, I hope / think that the more talented writers will get jobs elsewhere on the web in Mac journalism and everything will be peachy.
TUAW used to be my go to source for Apple news but I haven’t been there in years. Not since discovering iMore and then 9to5Mac and MacRumors. Stil, sad to see them go. I guess I was most surprised to see that AOL is still a thing.
I do hope Mike Wehner gets the boot.
TUAW used to be an every day “go to” for me. Once upon a time (’07 – ’10) they provided news content and Mac tips you couldn’t find anywhere else. Erica Sadun’s AppleScript and Xcode projects were truly unique and TUAW was often “the first with the most” when it came to Apple rumors. Recently, they seem to have fallen into the weeds with myriad other Apple blogs offering little unique content and virtually nothing for gearheads like myself.
I’ve been reading it for a few years. I enjoyed Erica Sadun’s writings, but she’s had almost none on the site in the past year or two. TJ Luoma has had some fantastic but infrequent pieces on there about automating things. I sure won’t miss Kelly Hodgkins’s bits, but unfortunately I encounter her writing on other sites like MacRumors (though her stuff there isn’t nearly as bad as her TUAW pieces). And I don’t know what I’ll do without Chris Rawson’s regular snarky Rumor Roundups! I hope that gets picked up somewhere else.
Stopped visiting TUAW when they did their awful redesign a few years back. At the same time I started regularly visiting 9to5. I imagine a LOT of people did the same thing.The redesign alone marked the beginning of the end – the site was a horrible struggle to visit. End of story.
The truth is TUAW was still a good daily read and AOL sucks. Simple.