What the hell happened to Digit ??

Perhaps all their eggs are in the magazine business basket.

indian mindset typically lacks technical vision and shifts more towards business profit and loss.

digit is (at least was) most popular among college students. if they had more technical articles, career & technical guidance, and interactive sessions (contests, featuring articles from reader write ins etc), than plain & simple reviews and reports those are easily available on internet, then it would have been more lively.

but i know some guys are trying stuff. anorion said they are going to get interviews from isro staff to motivate youngsters on the track. but i am not in touch with print media for long, i will need to find out what happened afterwards.

Yeah, I personally wanted to read something like Doctor Dobbs Journal or something that covers the trends in the IT industry. India being a hotbed of IT, something like this could be popular and as an IT professional myself I could find something like this useful.

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I can see what you mean.
My guess is that there is lack a geek / nerd / tinkerer culture in our whole desi world, not just digit. Arguably one may say that the market doesn't really care about technicalities and is more interested in shiny stuff. But keeping that aside and loving the tech for tech sake is what makes a geek 'geek'

Digit still sells their magazines well, I suppose. Chip & PCQuest are dead or non-existent in stands last time I checked (2018).

I'm sure their websites won't have everything as they want people to buy magazine for latest news. I used to buy their magazine regularly till 2012, afterwards I used to buy them only when I'm traveling as my internet connection was better. My last mag purchase was 3-4 years ago.

It's true they should update their website & focus on youtube but I'm sure they have a lot more staff than any youtube channel or other tech media outlets like GSMArena or android authority. So maybe they are still hanging on to the magazines & don't want to give away stuff based on small ad revenues. Future of magazines doesn't seem good with the rising internet penetration in India, so they need to do something.

People hardly read mags nowadays, and the demand will go down to 0 pretty soon. It is important for any business to change themselves with time. Look at Playboy, they now generate a lot of digital media side to its existing mag lineup even when it was/is so popular and have heavy dominance in the market. Still they are making changes to their mag content to suit the current needs and investing heavily on digital content.
Digit already has good name and fan base in the country. They need to up their digital game and stop focusing so much on their magazines. Any review of theirs are outdated by the time they print it, a hard truth that they need to understand.

They also have their website which is pretty regularly updated last I checked. If they can get a Youtube channel with some charismatic guy or gal, they can drum up a lot of views (and ad revenue).

I think they are quite right on track.
At present only one technical magazine on the market (there may be few others but their market share is negligible compared to Digit).

I think, having an youtube channel would be great. Specially they can integrate the mag reviews with hands-on videos of the same review (Specially; unboxing, how-to, game play reviews would be really nice).

Reminds me of Rajiv Makhani from NDTV. Dude has got his own followers (army) and quite popular. Whenever I see his videos, only thing that comes to mind is "This should have been Digit"!

PCQuest is still around, but yes, we are the top tech magazine in India
Readership is increasing, and so is magazine readership, if you consider Indian Readership Survey 2017
So "nobody reads magazines any more" is not really true
In areas with spotty internet connections and frequent blackouts, are DVDs are still the most reliable source of getting updates and data
Older readers prefer the curation and peace of mind of not having to deal with malware
Geek is our portal for discerning audiences, with a clean, no frills interface
Our main news portal, Digit.in is the top independent technology news site in the country

Our reporters did go to CES (2 of us), and while we have a dedicated video team, you must understand that the strengths of the edit team is writing text, which we use to simplify complex technologies, put products through the rigorous and unbiased test process, and report on the latest developments around the world. Most of the YouTube video stars only get the gadgets if they promise to tell good things about them. We do have a YouTube channel, and in fact were one of the earliest to start with Digit TV back in in 2010.

Everyone in the company loves the brand, and all the people who work on both the online and magazine teams were avid readers and technology enthusiasts. Of course, we acknowledge that there is a lot of work to be done, so anyone is welcome to send us constructive feedback to editor [at] digit.in, esp with the YouTube stuff and other comments.

Digit needs to move to different foray like e-magazines but paid like which can be read in e-readers.
SKOAR used to be great in those days. We used to wait for it to arrive and play all those demo games provided with it.
I think Digit needs to move to reddit type forums because we have to move with time.

bssunilreddy said:

I think Digit needs to move to reddit type forums because we have to move with time.

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This.
While I do think forum have it's own place, I do like to think that as far as "interactions" goes, Reddit style is the best. You can sh!it post more often, without caring "as much" about going off topic, since everyone comment on other's post, and nesting of those posts helps in keeping the on topic posts on track, while still letting anyone discuss anything at that moment.
And while we could have our very own r/apnadigit or something (since r/digit is taken), it's better to have our very own forum, but customized like Reddit. (Is that possible?).

Also, why is r/digitIndia private? Seems to be made for digit.in. Is this being used privately by digit mag staff?

Not in favor of reddit style forum. Don't like the UI!

bssunilreddy said:

Digit needs to move to different foray like e-magazines but paid like which can be read in e-readers.

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Isnt Digit already in Magzter ?

Btw, +1 to the Digit's YouTube channel as suggested by OP.

Vyom said:

This.
While I do think forum have it's own place, I do like to think that as far as "interactions" goes, Reddit style is the best. You can sh!it post more often, without caring "as much" about going off topic, since everyone comment on other's post, and nesting of those posts helps in keeping the on topic posts on track, while still letting anyone discuss anything at that moment.
And while we could have our very own r/apnadigit or something (since r/digit is taken), it's better to have our very own forum, but customized like Reddit. (Is that possible?).

Also, why is r/digitIndia private? Seems to be made for digit.in. Is this being used privately by digit mag staff?

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I don't really agree. Many forums like XDA, IVG and many others still get lot more traffic than us, even though they are not a reddit-format discussion forum.

Flash said:

Btw, +1 to the Digit's YouTube channel as suggested by OP.

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Digit

The magazine is literally the smallest of our properties now. It's there and it's the most read tech mag in India for the past 18 years, but we have diversified into far more.

The site is a much bigger monster and we have had a YouTube channel much before Indians were even watching anything on there. Everything is updated regularly, and we cover CES and other shows as well Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 | Latest Videos, News & Coverage | Digit.in

But hey, if you didn't know all that, then we are sucking at letting you know that we're doing all this, and that's a concern. We should definitely work on fixing that.

Logged in after eons, was thinking in the same lines as OP and viola there is a thread where someone has put those thoughts into words.
Digit is what kick started the passion & was my only source to the wealth of knowledge in the dial up days.

Was a subscriber for the mag for almost a decade and I still re-read them for nostalgia sake.
Can't say the same about home page, things kept going south till it became too cluttered and I stopped visiting.

Edit: Visited again just now and my opinion still remains the same, page layout is too cluttered.

Reddit Good: Multiple conversations in single thread. Bad: Everything else.

Raaabo said:

But hey, if you didn't know all that, then we are sucking at letting you know own that we're doing all this, and that's a concern. We should definitely work on fixing that.

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Digit - Less than 1000 views for most videos ! Those are not technical enough for my liking, but for something like digit they are wayyyyy too less.

Raaabo said:

The magazine is literally the smallest of our properties now. It's there and it's the most read tech mag in India for the past 18 years, but we have diversified into far more.

The site is a much bigger monster and we have had a YouTube channel much before Indians were even watching anything on there. Everything is updated regularly, and we cover CES and other shows as well Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 | Latest Videos, News & Coverage | Digit.in

But hey, if you didn't know all that, then we are sucking at letting you know that we're doing all this, and that's a concern. We should definitely work on fixing that.

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I have been expecting that the site would be something on the same level as say Anandtech, IGN, HardOCP or any such sites. I mean back in the days when I started reading digit, it was THE authority on hardware reviews. Perhaps you still are, but now wherever I go online, reviews from the most popular sites hit me first and the content already gets consumed.

As for the Youtube channel, it just is. I don't know what else to say. But then again I don't really watch review videos on youtube in general, so I don't really have much opinion on this.

I would like to see digit youtube channel what Beebom is currently. Such professional soothing animations and quality!

I think more laptop reviews & PC build guides might help the youtube channel. These aren't covered much by Indian youtubers & other phone youtubers are trying to slowly get into that (like iGyaan geekyranjit). I know a friend who has a youtube channel & he is doing some laptop reviews but mostly ones costing 70k or more. Video reviews of budget laptops might help, those in 35-50k range as you rarely find any review from good sources for those.

anupam_pb said:

I think more laptop reviews & PC build guides might help the youtube channel. These aren't covered much by Indian youtubers & other phone youtubers are trying to slowly get into that (like iGyaan geekyranjit). I know a friend who has a youtube channel & he is doing some laptop reviews but mostly ones costing 70k or more. Video reviews of budget laptops might help, those in 35-50k range as you rarely find any review from good sources for those.

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Valid point. Especially those laptop models which are available only in Indian market. There has been a lot of times when I couldn't find even a single professional review for a specific laptop model. (For ex. Asus E402NA). Most of the videos are noob unboxing with 144p camera on a bed lol.

Raaabo said:

The magazine is literally the smallest of our properties now. It's there and it's the most read tech mag in India for the past 18 years, but we have diversified into far more.

The site is a much bigger monster and we have had a YouTube channel much before Indians were even watching anything on there. Everything is updated regularly, and we cover CES and other shows as well Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 | Latest Videos, News & Coverage | Digit.in

But hey, if you didn't know all that, then we are sucking at letting you know that we're doing all this, and that's a concern. We should definitely work on fixing that.

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I just want to give constructive advice because i love Digit/Chip and i have been in this forum for so long its almost embarrassing (uncle-ji vibes). So here are some criticism of the stuffs you talked about.
1) You had a YouTube channel much before any Indians. Nice, Cool... BUT... Your first video -uploaded 9 years ago- is at 141 views right now. My first video on my Youtube channel (lol), also 9 years ago, has 1,898 views . .
Why is a random upload of my dota game more popular? (ps. ignore the dislikes). Not demeaning you all, i am just making light of this contrast and the lack of effort and attention from DIGIT's part.

2) Can you collaborate with smaller tech youtube channels , and let them do all the hardwork, editing, creativity stuffs, while you supply them the products and if possible tickets to Tech shows where they can VLOG the entire event (apart from doing the usual showcasing). Just get one of those hyper-excited-mumbaiker Marquis Brownlee wannabe teenager youtuber and give them the resources. They may even do it for free. Give them some dreams using Linus Sabastian as an example, who started of at NCIX (translation: Digit) and has now formed his own company LinusMediaGroup (translation: IndianTechie69420 or whatever cringey youtube channel they have). Trust me, with the resources you have, they will be making much better content, because they have one thing your YouTube team doesn't have : Motivation and Drive.

3) We could learn something from GSMarena.com. Another top tier mobile phone review website. Remember when they started their youtube channel? That was 12 years ago. Hardly anybody watched it back then. Till the past 2 yeasr they had extremely low subscribers (despite their website being so popular)......And then BAM!! They hired two young people, a guy and a girl, who DONT even have to be Techies (because they read off scripts) and suddenly GSMarena youtube videos started showing up in search results, views started hitting millions in their videos and their sub count is more than 500k now.
PS. Check their comments, all thirsty nerds and nerdettes making totally irrelevant comments. But hey, if hot and sexy chics and dudes boosts the subs and views, further introducing the channel to people who actually want good content, then whats the harm?

4) Your most "popular" Product review is at 388,000 views (Honor 8). Please have a deep look at it. Isnt that the most uninspiring, most boring and forgettable product review you have ever seen? I bet all the views came because this phone was hot in the Indian tech scene back in June -August 2018, and not because people came expecting a quality review.

PS. Please dont mind my harsh words.