Sys-Con drops ColdFusion for Silverlight

Posted At : September 8, 2007 11:52 PM | Posted By : Michael Dinowitz
Related Categories: Fusion Authority Quarterly Update,News,Opinion,Rant,Announcements

Sys-Con is a printing company. They are not interested in community support. They are not interested in language advancement. They are interested in money. They are interested in enough money to print a magazine, give it away to thousands and still make a profit. Looking over the number and cost of ads in their magazine, they must want a BIG profit. And those advertising dollars are partially guaranteed by Adobe's support.

According to Sys-Con:

After ColdFusion became part of the Adobe product line Adobe recently decided to discontinue its support of the magazine.

Now from what I saw in the last issue of CFDJ from months back, there were still Adobe ads. What exactly was the support that was being cut back? One less ad? Half of the ads? All of them? Or did Adobe give them direct cash above and beyond the ads for operations? We won't know till someone from Adobe responds.

But unless Adobe was funding the ENTIRE magazine, any cut in their support should not cause it to fold. The Fusion Authority Quarterly Update isn't folding and not only don't we get direct money from Adobe, we don't even have any Adobe ads in this (and probably the next) issue.

Of course, we care about the community quite a bit more than we do money. That's why we're not a media giant like Sys-Con. But we still have our souls. In the end, I think that's what matters most.

Note one other thing missing from this press release. They are not taking any responsability for their own actions. The total lack of editorial quality, the 'borrowing' of content from other people's websites, their own website being so ad filled that nothing can be found and those freeking annoying auto-play video and popup ads. In the end many of the big names in the community had left them and moved on to other journals or websites. This is just as telling as the removal of Adobe's support.

The biggest problem here is that it looks bad for ColdFusion. The first print magazine dedicated to it has left the building. Now rather than a ColdFusion magazine and a ColdFusion journal, there's only a journal. The very fact that they're moving the magazine from ColdFusion, an Adobe product to Silverlight, a Microsoft product, can and will be used against ColdFusion.

For those who want to get some quality printed ColdFusion and want to ignore Sys-Con, the following journal and books are available:

To be totally self serving, if you want to buy an ad in the only print ColdFusion journal around, we would be happy to sell you one. :)

Sys-Con Press Release:
http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/426141.htm

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I'm of two minds after reading this. First, I said to my self "good riddance". Like your discussion of sys-con's site quality in your entry, I think sys-con is nothing better than a spam company these days. Their site is barely tolerable. And even though I have repeatedly unsubscribed from ALL sys-con communications, I continually get marketing emails from them. If I had more money, I'd sue them for that.

Secondly, I would not be surprised if Adobe HAD removed support for CFDJ. Even though Tim Buntel assured me that he is doing a lot to market CF 8, I have seen very little evidence of this. I don't think he's lying, I just think the marketing is NOT working. If it were, we wouldn't continually see "CF is dead" articles from major trade publications. It's one thing to throw a few thousand dollars into a modest marketing campaign that mostly preaches to the choir, and it's another to do a full on blitz like what we saw with the CS3 release. CF gets very little marketing love from Adobe. But we saw the same thing with the previous ColdFusion owners, so there's nothing new here. Like before, the marketing is left largely up to people like you, Michael, and the rest of the CF community. Sigh...

# Posted By Jake Munson | 9/9/07 1:23 AM

how do you know that CFDJ's quality wasn't the actual cause of adobe pulling it's support? CFDJ made itself irrelevant & somewhat disliked, i wouldn't see much sense in throwing money at them either.

i decided i wouldn't write anything else for them after i wrote a couple of articles several years ago & wasn't treated particularly well. my dealings w/them left a bad taste & i can't imagine i was the only one.

# Posted By PaulH | 9/9/07 1:49 AM

I for one say HUZZAH! And good riddance to a pariah of the community. Frankly I don't see how they even stay in business. My calls to discuss advertising were met with a one week delay and I had to request information three times before I got the information specific to my request. As was pointed out, the site is horrific. I've not seen such poor management of online advertising in years.

It is evident that Sys-Con has hard feelings, as shown by their lack of appreciation of the support of CF folks over the years. Rather than thanking contributors and readers they insist on trying to belittle CF by making comments which have no statistics to back up their statements.

Good riddance Sys-Con. We have someone already to replace you who cares about the community.

# Posted By TJ Downes | 9/9/07 3:19 AM

It was going downhill after Charlie and Simon left at any rate. Good riddance? No. Not by a longshot. They did need good community submissions for articles (and there were many) so perhaps only we can blame ourselves. Thanks for CFDJ in the past - but time for all of us to look to the future. I have so many ideas (Adobe tech of course) my head is hurting.

# Posted By Peter Tilbrook | 9/9/07 5:42 AM

I don't think you can put the words ColdFusion and advertising (or marketing) into the same sentence. That's like putting the words vacation and Iraq into the same sentence. It doesn't happen.

The ads on the CFDJ site made the content intolerable in my opinion. I usually have a very high threshold of mentally blocking ads.

# Posted By Gary F | 9/9/07 9:17 AM

# Posted By Gary F | 9/9/07 9:18 AM

Good riddance. Hopefully all the good people who used to write for CFDJ will instead contribute to FAQU and make that great publication even better...

# Posted By Jim | 9/9/07 9:24 AM

Adobe could have easily pulled all funding for their ads a long time ago and CFDJ continued to print them anyway. They have done that before just to fill space. The print world is difficult now as you know and clearly they didn't know how to make it work and didn't listen to the many people that were offering helpful advice.

Contrary to some I don't really care that much. I stopped going to the web site. Newsworthy? yea I guess. A non event in the long term? yes indeed.

# Posted By joshua cyr | 9/9/07 9:48 AM

"The very fact that they're moving the magazine from ColdFusion, an Adobe product to Silverlight, a Microsoft product, can and will be used against ColdFusion."

I find it just the opposite. The fact that this POS magazine drop CF was a plus! I feel sorry for the Silverlight people out there.

# Posted By Tony Petruzzi | 9/9/07 11:15 AM

I don't think Sys-Con's dropping of CFDJ looks bad for ColdFusion at all. I think having such a terrible publication be the most well-known magazine about CF just made it look that much worse. You're right, they need to take responsibility for their own failure. The magazine was awful and if it had any redeeming value, the lack of support from one advertiser would not have brought it down.

# Posted By Rachel Maxim | 9/9/07 12:57 PM

Onward with Fusion Authority Quarterly. I have no heard feelings with CFDJ dying - it's about damn time. To anyone reading this, your money is _much_ better spent on the FA Quarterly.

# Posted By Aaron West | 9/9/07 2:01 PM

Ok - this is of topic, but in respond to Gary saying "That's like putting the words vacation and Iraq into the same sentence. It doesn't happen."

Read this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6218210.stm :)

# Posted By Trond Ulseth | 9/10/07 5:22 AM

What bothered me was that it seemed to have turned into a Flex journal, in the last
couple of years. I mean, that's all well and good.
But it didn't serve me any purpose in honing or increasing my CF skills.

I used to read the journal a while back, mainly for Ben Forta's articles.

Another thing I find quite disturbing is that you can't find any ColdFusion books at any bookstore
anymore. I used to be able to walk into some of the larger Barnes and Nobles and Borders bookstores
and always find at least one. Now, there are none. O'Reilly will no longer publish any CF books.

CF seems to be becoming more and more niche.
Not very inviting to new users.

I mean the way I even heard about CF was some professor had a free educational version of CF 2.0
back when I was in college.

You could get CF for dummies books with CF Express in it.
Now there seems to be no incentive for students to get into CF.

Ali

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