About Tech.pinions

June 13, 2012 marked the one-year anniversary of our site, Tech.pinions. In light of its anniversary, I thought I would share why we felt compelled to attempt something different within the public tech media forum, namely to start a website dedicated primarily to opinion editorial and long form columns.

One of the primary functions of my job as an industry analyst is to study the industry at large and attempt to make insightful observations about all of its happenings. Besides meeting with as many technology companies as my time allows, I find reading quite a bit of tech journalism to be helpful. The problem I found was that much online technology journalism is focused more on information than insight. Tech journalism at its best tells stories and covers informative facts and is genuinely more informative than insightful. There is nothing wrong with this model and I find it particularly helpful in my line of work.

However, what I desire to read is a wide range of informed and insightful opinions on key industry topics. What I have found in my 12 years as an analyst is that insightful perspectives in the form of opinion columns were much harder to find than informative content. I believe both have a role in shaping this industry’s future, and our goal with Tech.pinions is to provide a place where interested readers can find a wide range of opinions, that we hope share key insights and perspectives, on a wide range of subjects related to the technology industry.

Our goal is to accomplish this vision in a number of ways. The first is to be highly selective in the opinions we allow to be published. We seek out a wide range of opinions from individuals who have a history of credibility and a reputation in this industry. We seek out authors who are professional industry observers, experts in their field, company executives, and many other kinds of insightful individuals. The casual reader may not know who the author is, but oftentimes industry insiders will know the author. Because of this we found it important to include the bio of the author on every post so readers can easily see who the person is and what their background is. I personally find this very important when reading content on the Internet in order to know if the author is credible and should be trusted for their opinions, insights, and perspectives.

One other point on this first goal should be made clear. Opinions are not facts. The opinions we publish are based on expert experiences, insights, and data, but the point remains that opinions are just that–people’s opinions. Because of that we fully expect healthy and respectful disagreement from time to time. We only ask that the dialogue be respectful because in the end, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and most importantly, the beautiful thing about opinions is that they open the door to disagreement. We hold our writers to a high bar with their content and we intend to hold our commenters to a high bar as well. So when we disagree, let’s agree to disagree.

Secondly, our goal is insight and perspective, not breaking or reporting news. You will not come to Tech.pinions to find breaking or timely reporting of news. Rather you can come to Tech.pinions to find insightful perspective from trusted industry sources about the news or tech industry landscape. We may not cover every bit of news or industry angle, but what we do cover we hope to provide fresh and unique insights about.

Third, our content will come largely in the form of columns. I personally love reading longer form content from trusted industry sources. It is simply much harder to find a collection of this content since many outlets favor news over editorial. We strive to do the reverse and make editorials and columns our priority rather than trying to break news. Though we do from time to time comment on what others have written, you will find no regurgitating of other blogs’ content; rather all our content is 100% original.

Our mission will remain to provide original insights and fresh perspectives on all things related to tech. And we hope that more than anything, Tech.pinions is a contribution to the technology industry at large where intelligent conversations can live.

–Ben Bajarin and the Tech.pinions Team