Goodbye HardOCP - Hello Intel @ [H]ard|OCP
Well this is a bit of a surprise, Come April 1st HardOCP will be "mothballed" with the current Editor in Chief, Kyle Bennett, taking a position at Intel to be the Director of Enthusiast Engagement.
When I first started getting into hardware one of the first sites I paid attention to was HardOCP. At the time Kyle had been part of several "networks" that helped make early sites popular through advertising and promotions. Of course, it also helped that the content Kyle posted was engaging and focused on the enthusiast PC world and I modeled much of what I did on Ninjalane.com after what I saw on HardOCP.
Of course as website owners there comes a time when you have to ask yourself "What is my future?". Lately the landscape of hardware review has quickly dried up. Advertising dollars largely went away 8 years ago and the rise of Techutainment has really driven the audience away from "learning" about hardware to watching other people "play" with hardware (while also making silly faces.) Over the past several years we have seen Scott from TechReport and Ryan from PC Perspective take on jobs in the industry while individual reviewers have been taking jobs with hardware makers for years. Why not?, they are the defacto technical experts that can not only use the products but also talk about them.
Hopefully, with Kyle helping Intel re-engage the enthusiast community we can start to see resurgence in PC Hardware which will lead to a reason to upgrade and a reason to build your PCs. Many people forget that it has always been the vocal minority that drives what hardware makers do and when that voice is silenced we get things like gold motherboards, hard drive docks and RGB ecosystems.
Effective April 1, 2019 I will be taking on the position of Director of Enthusiast Engagement for Intel’s Technology Leadership Marketing group. Intel wants to reconnect with the top of the high-performance consumer pyramid which contains hardware enthusiasts, overclockers, gamers, and content creators. This is the part of our community that has great influence through word of mouth and online engagement. I’ll be focusing on helping Intel get back in touch with this audience and re-establishing a voice and dialog on where the company is going with its future technologies. If you are reading this, you are very likely already part of this group.
All the best Kyle!
Related Web URL: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2019/03/19/goodbye...
