About.com guide blatantly rips off DCist

Photo courtesy of
‘douches’
courtesy of ‘twicepix’

While watching the @welovedc Twitter account yesterday, I saw what could have turned into an entertaining confrontation that sadly never seemed to go anywhere. @DCist_updates angrily demanded that @washingtondcist get an original name. Who is @washingtondcist? Karen M. Hart, the About.com DC Travel Guide.

Hart’s Twitter feed is full of retweets of more renowned DC institutions interspersed with the occasional link to her somewhat sporadically updated About.com blog, so it’s not like any locals are likely to confuse The Real DCist with the impostor, and it’s true that Hart’s target audience is people for whom DC is a tourism destination who are likely not already reading DCist.   Nonetheless, Hart must know quite well that a large portion of her potential audience comes from cities that have Gothamist Network blogs, so latching onto a name like “washingtondcist” is a sneaky and underhanded thing to do. I can completely understand why DCist would feel the need to confront Hart openly over the possibility of confusion.

So I hope DCist accepts this fistbump of solidarity, from us to them.
Photo courtesy of
‘giant fist’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.

Tiffany lives in Brookland with her husband Tom, son Charlie, and two high-maintenance cats. Read why Tiffany loves DC.

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3 thoughts on “About.com guide blatantly rips off DCist

  1. The fact that they can’t go original and put their actual name in their twitter names says enough about their feelings of their business

  2. Just to clarify/confuse the identity issue further, About.com has two Washington DC sites, which many people may not realize. I am the guide to Washington DC under About.com’s City/Towns channel and write about DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. My twitter feed is AboutDC.

    About.com is not a blog, though each site includes a blog on its homepage. About.com is a network of more than 700 websites that is a part of the New York Times Company. Each site is created and maintained by a “Guide,” a real person who is an expert in his/her site topic.