John Dvorak explains how he tweaks Mac users for traffic

by on June 10, 2006

John Dvorak

Last night after being on "This Week in Tech" (#1 tech podcast with about 250,000 downloads a week) we were standing around and John Dvorak came up to me and said hi and thanks for being on the show. I told him I admired how he gets people to link to him by pissing off vast groups (this week he had all the VLoggers up in arms cause he was being his cantankerous old self and telling vloggers that vlogs are crap). Anyway, he started explaining how he plays the Mac audience. Dave Winer, who was also part of the conversation, said "hold on, I wanna get this on video." John didn't object and this video is the result. Destined to be an internet classic. Already Dugg 500+ times. Of course now he gets even more traffic just talking about it. The guy is a numbers-generating genious! I remember about seven years ago Patrick and I were visiting TechTV thanks to Leo Laporte's invitation and we met John in the hall and he told my son "the secret to life is to get the camera to pay attention to you." Or something like that. John said last night he didn't remember saying that, but that he'd take credit for it anyway. Heheh.

Well, I'm off to go to VLoggerCon. Oh, last night I met the guy, Kent Nichols, who does "Ask a Ninja." That guy is funny. He's holding the microphone here on TWiT.
Ask a Ninja on TWiT

  • Ill see you at vloggercon...
  • Colin Scroggins
    The funny thing is that I got almost exactly the same admission from Rob Enderle in email correspondence about a year ago. That marked the point I quit looking at him as a serious analyst and begun thinking of him as a tech P.T. Barnum. This admission by Dvorak doesn't surprise me one bit.
  • Ross
  • david
    I love when I’m right! About three years ago I accused him of being little more than a click whore.
  • Devil's Advocate
    Most of us have know Dvorak was a troll for years.

    Tell me something I don't know.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Your bending over backwards to make fun of John never ceases to amaze me, (that and your eternal beef with Alan Meckler) here you admit all the time that catchy headlines and sexy controversial topics are a-ok when it comes to blogging (anything for traffic), but some print guy doing the same marketing zap, that's unpardonable sin, unforgivable, his rant was more against the madness of crowds or wolf-packing (cult of Mac) the way I read it. But this proves you a mere hypocrite, not ok for TV, Radio and Print guys, all ok for bloggers. But I think John lost it once he started blogging, his columns are still tip top tho.
  • Diego
    David (#4), you beat me to it. Click whore is right. He's just a tabloid blogger.
  • Peter
    Scoble, Dvorak and Winer all in one place!?!?! I can't image a room big enough for all those egos.
  • Jon
    I e-mailed Dvorak almost 10 years ago (when people still read PC Magazine). I very politely pointed out a discrepancy in an article of his and he rudely replied back in a lordly "you dare to contradict me? begone peasant" kind of way. I lost my high respect for him and have steered clear of reading his articles/opinions since then.

    Peter, it probably takes an ego to get to the point where these guys have gotten, but Scoble (never met the guy, however) seems to be the type to bend over backwards to be helpful and polite, unlike Dvorak, who seems to possess the "bad" kind of ego.
  • Michael
    So Dvorak finally reveals that he trolls for Mac user traffic...to the approximately 10 people who didn't already know it.

    As the kids would say, LOL.
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