It wasn’t long ago that the Pro-Talk websites were one of the hottest and fastest growing media channels in B2B tech. Chris Rand built a media company by devising a simple approach and replicating across several industries. In the early days, these sites faced criticism because press releases were posted with little editing, but they soon worked hard to add more editorial input and unique content.
Sadly after a purchase by Centaur, a couple of major tweaks to search engine algorithms and a significant round of redundancies, the Engineeringtalk, Processingtalk, Electronicstalk, and Manufacturingtalk sites have been absorbed into The Engineer’s website under the Engineer Source brand.
It’s always sad to see titles disappear and journalists lose their jobs, and I wish all these editors the very best of luck in finding a new and hopefully better role. For more background information, I’d recommend Russ Swan’s blog (he’s the editor of Laboratorytalk, although he’s expecting this role to disappear very soon), which offers a detailed history, discusses what might happen in the future and also has a comment from Chris Rand.
