May/June 2011
Alumni Profiles
Arnold Kim ’96 Diagnoses Apple on MacRumors.com
By Laura Butchy ’04 Arts
Dr. Arnold Kim ’96 had two passions from a young age: medicine and computers. These interests grew into dual careers for Kim as a physician and founder of MacRumors.com. In 2008, however, with MacRumors attracting more than 4 million readers a month, he made the decision to stop diagnosing kidney problems and instead analyze Apple news and rumors full-time.
Dr. Arnold Kim ’96 works on MacRumors.com in his home office. Since Kim left his
medical practice to focus
on MacRumors, the website has
continued to grow. “Surprisingly enough, the recession hasn’t tangibly affected us,” Kim says. “Between MacRumors and my other web projects, we hired
four full-time employees in 2009.” The additional staff has increased the site’s ability to cover Apple news and
rumors, attracting an active community of enthusiasts to its news, buyer’s
guide, discussion forums and a separate section focused on the iPhone.
Advertising revenue rose in 2009 and 2010, and according to Quantcast,
MacRumors’ number of monthly visitors is now more than 8 million.
When it launched in February 2000, MacRumors was a solo enterprise for Kim. “It’s hard to even say it was an ‘enterprise’ as much as it was a hobby,” he explains. “It really required little financing. Beyond that it was just the time I put into it.” That time had to be well-managed, as Kim earned an M.D. at the Medical College of Virginia, completed an internal medicine residency at UNC Chapel Hill and specialized in a nephrology fellowship back at MCV.
MacRumors was
started in Kim’s last year of
medical school. Already interested in Apple, Kim began tracking news
and rumors
on his blog. After his medical fellowship, he joined a private nephrology practice in Richmond, Va., for
two years before leaving to devote himself to MacRumors full time. “The decision took a long time,” Kim says. “I was able to effectively juggle my job and MacRumors for years, but
MacRumors was what I enjoyed working on in my free time.”
Kim began spending his free time on computers while growing up in Newport News, Va., when his family got a Commodore Vic 20, followed by an Apple //c. “For whatever reasons, I was drawn to it,” he says. “I actually got a modem early. At the time, the Internet didn’t really exist as it does today, so dialing up local bulletin board systems was the extent of it.”
Kim followed his sister Nam ’93 to Columbia. He was pre-med with a concentration in computer science, foreshadowing his career interests. It was only a matter of time, however, before two such time-consuming occupations led to a choice. “In 2007, my wife and I had our first child, and that ultimately spurred the decision to quit medicine,” Kim says. “My available free time shrank, and what I actually wanted to do with that free time also shifted. Spending time with our newborn and my wife took priority.”
It is difficult to quantify Kim’s working hours. During key times when there are a lot of news and rumors, he may spend all day working, but hiring other writers has helped. As blogging has grown in popularity over the years, the news cycle has accelerated, forcing MacRumors to expand coverage.
“The site has grown considerably through the years, but the basic format hasn’t changed,” Kim says. “The news and rumor focus has remained generally consistent. In fact, I’ve always prided myself on the selectivity of the news we choose to report on and how seriously we take our reporting.”
Laura Butchy ’04 Arts is a teacher, writer and dramaturg in New York City.