Techdirt Moves On Up To The 64th Floor: Some Changes Around Here

from the pardon-our-dust dept

Wed, Oct 15th 2008 10:00am — Mike Masnick

We've got a bunch of announcements today (and a few more coming up as well), but I wanted to start off with the big one: Techdirt, the company, is becoming Floor64, the company -- while Techdirt, the blog, will remain Techdirt. The blog began back in 1997 as a fun side project by me. Over the years it grew into much more, and in 2000 it became a business, also called Techdirt. In 2006, we launched the Techdirt Insight Community as our main line of business and the natural evolution of what we'd been doing as a company. However, there was growing confusion over the Techdirt brand, as people weren't clear whether it meant the blog, the company or the community -- so we felt it was time to clarify. Specifically, there are now three brands related to this site:

Floor64 becomes our new parent brand. That's the brand under which all of our products will now reside. It's a brand we've used for years internally (though some have noticed), and now it represents our overall outward brand.

Insight Community is one of Floor64's two main offerings. This rebranding of the Techdirt Insight Community will allow us to expand beyond the community we've built around Techdirt, to cover much more than just technology and business. The Insight Community is totally redesigned to reflect where the business has been headed over the past few months. If you're already a member, go check out the totally redesigned system. If you're not yet a member, go sign up and start participating (and earning money). If you're interested in sponsoring a case there, go check out how it works and learn about the value of sponsoring a case and engaging with the community.

The Insight Community is all about generating insights for companies, recognizing, as we often talk about here on Techdirt, that there's value in the creation of insightful content. The Insight Community is a platform that makes it possible for companies to generate insightful expertise on demand for use in a variety of different ways.

Techdirt is our other main offering, and is now solely focused on the blog itself. This should help us avoid some confusion over our different properties and the services that we, as Floor64, offer. Techdirt will remain the same great blog it's been all along, but we'll have some cool new features which we'll be posting about shortly as well. As always, Techdirt, the blog will be focused on providing timely and insightful analysis of technology and business news, with a focus on how technology relates to innovation, public policy and economics.

We've been hard at work on this effort, and there's a lot more to come -- some of which we'll announce today, and much more will be coming in the near future. All of our efforts are, of course, made possible by the great, vibrant, often brilliant and always opinionated community that was built up through this site. So, we're excited to open this new chapter of the business and the site, as we look forward to doing plenty more in the future to continue to give back to this community.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: floor64, insight community, techdirt
Companies: floor64, techdirt

17 Comments

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Adam Singer, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:09am

Congrats, Mike!
Huge news - hope everything goes well, I wish you all the best.

Adam
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some old guy, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:26am

congrats
congrats, and might I inquire.. where did "Floor64" come from? To me, it sounds a tad like a very old console game. Not to imply that as a bad thing, mind you.
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ulle, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:28am

I just happened to see this earlier and then came here and saw the news, talk about timing.

Who is Floor64.com?

These guys show up as one of my largest referrers... yet there is no web site, and no mention of anyone leveraging their feeds, etc.

If you know who they are (or if you're part of their team), please leave a comment or drop me a note. You've definitely piqued my curiosity.
http://www.buzzhit.com/2004/10/who-is-floor64com_03.html
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:29am

This may be big, but when are you going to start selling T-shirts?
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:39am

Onward and upward!
Congratulations, Mike.

You've had the CEO role of TechDirt piece as your own for quite some time. But, has it been ironed out what your role will be in the new entity? Will you be active in the day-to-day activities of Floor64 or will you be devoting most of your time to The Public Blog?

Keep up the good work!
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NeoConBushSupporter, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:47am

A little confused now?
So was it Techdirt or Floor64 that endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket yesterday?

VOTE McCain 2008 - He won’t "redistribute" the wealth . . . thats a promise!
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Relonar, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:47am

High Five! and on to another great decade! keep up the great work.
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Mark Evans, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:47am

Congrats
So, what's the inspiration for Floor64? Cool name, by the way.

Mark
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:50am

What if my building only has 3 floors? or 21? just wondering.
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Keith Jolie, 15 Oct 2008 @ 10:51am

Good move
Great idea - it will help you remove your corporate entity from my troglodyte opinions. cheers
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Pete Valle, 15 Oct 2008 @ 1:26pm

Cheers!
Congrats! As a loyal Techdirt reader for years now, I think this is a great idea.

Cheers and good luck with the incoming projects!
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mike allen, 15 Oct 2008 @ 2:34pm

sounds
great idea keep it up
mike
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Dan Kantor, 15 Oct 2008 @ 4:08pm

Congrats!
Great stuff Mike! Been loving Techdirt for 10 years now. I'm very happy to see things moving for you guys.
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nasch, 16 Oct 2008 @ 8:02am

Just thought of something
Mike always says when patent issues come up that the idea is the easy part. Isn't the Insight Community based on coming up with ideas? Or is there more to it than that?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2008 @ 8:19am

Re:
Whenever Mike does sell t-shirts, it will be llooooooooooottsssss of them.
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jerome, 12 Mar 2009 @ 12:43pm

floors
hebben jullie ook vloeren te koop voor klanten in holland,

groet,
http://www.holtzvloeren.nl
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jacky, 8 Nov 2009 @ 10:27pm

nice
i like it. www.google.com
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