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Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

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Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#11

Post by arn »

lifefundr wrote: post #3

Funny you should mention this...The Startup Foundry is doing exactly that. A blog focused only on startups. Check it out, we have gained a lot of traction and have a relatively large following for being so new (about two weeks). http://thestartupfoundry.com

So... and this is a serious question.

Let's say you cover the next Twitter or Facebook before they become the next Twitter or Facebook. Once they explode in popularity, are you going to stop writing about them? Even though those articles are getting the most traffic on the site? And tons of speciality sites start appearing just about Twitter and Facebook. And you even know people from Twitter and Facebook since you profiled them when they were little, and can get the inside scoop on changes and upcoming features.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#12

Post by atldev »

This post reminded me of the early days. There was a time when all you had to do to get Michael to review your app was to add it to delicious with a tag he watched for.

He reviewed my web2.0, vertical search, Google map mashup (so 2005!). I wish I would have kept a screenshot for nostalgia.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#13

Post by jayliew »

dasil003 wrote: post #10

Arrington will be there for 3 years exactly. I don't really read TechCrunch anymore, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled on September 28, 2013 for his new thing.

Just because the incentives say so, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of him actually leaving earlier than that date. That said, I'm looking forward to his new adventure, sooner or later.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#14

Post by petercooper »

atldev wrote: post #12

This post reminded me of the early days. There was a time when all you had to do to get Michael to review your app was to add it to delicious with a tag he watched for. He reviewed my web2.0, vertical search, Google map mashup (so 2005!). I wish I would have kept a screenshot for nostalgia.

Even being an active commenter on his site was enough. It worked for me. (Being the doofus I am, I asked him to hold off till I finished the "new" version of my app which.. never happened ;-))

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#15

Post by petercooper »

citricsquid wrote: post #8
asanwal wrote: post #7

Arrington says that writing about startups would not be the best business decision, and he is probably right - less people interested in startups than Apple, Facebook, etc as well as a reduced # of advertisers. How would a "startup-only blog" pay the bills? The Startup Foundry guys - would love to hear your thoughts.

It probably wouldn't and that is part of the problem, a lot of things that would be great can't work as a business and shouldn't... I guess they could always go down the paid route, but for it to exist as a free blog and be entirely about true startups I can't see it being a business success like Techcrunch is. They could always try and work out a way to "pray" on the early adopter trend, where every self proclaimed…

I mostly agree. It couldn't work with the typical free blog business model that's been popular till now (and which worked for TechCrunch initially) because things (advertisers mostly) have moved on.

But.. an organization that went beyond the typical blog role could make money. Consider Chris McCann's Startup Digest. That's building on e-mail right now, but something like Startup Foundry could have fingers in multiple profitable pies: job listings, social events, conferences, angel/VC matching - it just needs the velocity, connections, and brand power to pull it off. (I could be wrong but I don't think it's a coincidence TechCrunch's initial big boom occurred around the time Michael started doing the house parties.)

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#16

Post by atldev »

petercooper wrote: post #14
atldev wrote: post #12

This post reminded me of the early days. There was a time when all you had to do to get Michael to review your app was to add it to delicious with a tag he watched for. He reviewed my web2.0, vertical search, Google map mashup (so 2005!). I wish I would have kept a screenshot for nostalgia.

Even being an active commenter on his site was enough. It worked for me. (Being the doofus I am, I asked him to hold off till I finished the "new" version of my app which.. never happened ;-))

Nice. If I remember correctly, in his review of my site he said it was as ugly as eBay :)

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#17

Post by nhangen »

dasil003 wrote: post #9
bpeters wrote: post #2

Wow, if TechCrunch was just about startups (Everyone of them), I might actually come back to as part as my daily reading. Until they clean up their articles and focus on what matters then it is hard to justify spending time on their site.

The thing is that they are focusing on what matters to most people and that's exactly the problem.

Are they? Seems to me that they exist to feed the trolls.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#18

Post by nikcub »

We were going to setup a 'minor league' (Michael kept referring to it as that internally, and it started long before this talk) blog that simply listed every new startup launch. That ended up becoming Crunchbase.

A whole team were hired to enter the data and keep it up to date, and new startups are still go into Crunchbase, just the output is not very good. There was going to be a feed of all new added companies in Crunchbase that would feature on TC.com.

The prob is that as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google etc. The audience for news around those companies is 10x what the audience for startup news is (it is also 10x larger than the audience for more technical writing is)

The large audience traffic spikes that Techcrunch had through its history were all from stories that broke news about Apple, Google, YouTube, Twitter etc.

I think the new blogs can do both, just turn the dial more towards startups and more dev/tech.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#19

Post by zaidf »

nikcub wrote: post #18

We were going to setup a 'minor league' (Michael kept referring to it as that internally, and it started long before this talk) blog that simply listed every new startup launch. That ended up becoming Crunchbase. A whole team were hired to enter the data and keep it up to date, and new startups are still go into Crunchbase, just the output is not very good. There was going to be a feed of all new added companies in C…

I think the new blogs can do both, just turn the dial more towards startups and more dev/tech.

Not unless the founders of the blog make a very explicit decision to pass on financial benefits to continue covering start-ups. Like you said, startup coverage doesn't have much audience relative to Apple etc. and that means money lost.

That is why I am not convinced we can have a popular startup blog like TC ... those that mostly cover start-ups rarely get popular; those get popular tend to have a good mix of startup + big co news which over time becomes big co news.

Re: Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

#20

Post by nikcub »

zaidf wrote: post #19
nikcub wrote: post #18

We were going to setup a 'minor league' (Michael kept referring to it as that internally, and it started long before this talk) blog that simply listed every new startup launch. That ended up becoming Crunchbase. A whole team were hired to enter the data and keep it up to date, and new startups are still go into Crunchbase, just the output is not very good. There was going to be a feed of all new added companies in C…

I think the new blogs can do both, just turn the dial more towards startups and more dev/tech. Not unless the founders of the blog make a very explicit decision to pass on financial benefits to continue covering start-ups. Like you said, startup coverage doesn't have much audience relative to Apple etc. and that means money lost. That is why I am not convinced we can have a popular startup blog like TC ... those that…

Thats fair. The issue then is that 80% of tips currently go to TC because everybody wants their startup featured there alongside all the other tech news - even if only 10% of the audience is interested.

For PR companies, TC is still the big 'get', probably ranks just below a NYTimes or WSJ feature. You'd have to do a good job of handling news and new companies to convince a lot of these startups that a good/thorough feature in a startup-focused blog is worth more than being one of 20 stories on a tech blog.

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