Mobile Industry Review (MIR) is a site i’ve been following for a while now. I did one of my ‘ilike’ posts on it last year . It’s somewhere that I visit a good few times a day for my ‘hit’ of news in the mobile industry, and throughout the three years or so it’s been going it has established itself as one of the UK’s foremost Mobile websites. The fairly recent addition of the ‘ MIR Show ‘ has made household names (well in the geek households!) of Ewan MacLeod, Ben Smith, Dan Lane, and James Whatley. The show was often cited as ‘Top Gear – For Mobiles’ – which it truly was. The world of MIR was looking good.
Until one tweet changed that :-
@Ew4n – Mobile Industry Review’s output has been bought by one company… we’re turning private-subscription at the end of the month!
The accompanying article soon appeared here on the site.
I was totally shocked, MIR is as it’s jingle states ‘The ONLY source that counts’ – and it was disappearing. It was an odd feeling on one hand I felt massively proud that Ewan had ‘done good’ and his, and the teams effort had paid off. But on the other I was sad that the site, and the community was going. The post has certainlyhad some fierce responses, accusations of Ewan ‘selling out’ etc.. But this simply isn’t the case. Running a site is NOT cheap, most sites are paid for by advertising. MIR did have adverts, but only a handful, and most importantly they didn’t get in the way! So it would seem most of the cash funding the site came from Ewan’s pocket, which obviously with 300k readers can only be so deep!
All I can say is that i’ve enjoyed it while it’s lasted and feel very proud that I even got on the MIR Show – TWICE! (well three times actually but I think I ended up on the cutting room floor) 🙂
It’s going to be weird with it gone – I’ve seen some poor imitations spring up already. But MIR, certainly now isn’t ‘just’ another news site, copying and pasting the latest press releases. It *is* a community, with all sorts of characters, from top end mobile execs, to mobile geeks like me, all together in one place. So yeah, you can have a red banner, and all the latest news in the mobile world, heck even have a video podcast. But will there be somewhere that totally replaces Mobile Industry Review?
Not a chance.
P.S. Ewan, Ben, Dan and James I officially invite you out for a ‘thanks for all the fish’ beer at some point! 🙂
