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Why TechCrunch is over

yared.com

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#11
post #3

TechCrunch is not over. It's just that the great-stratups-are-everywhere environment matured. It's less novel. And the marketing playground is for non geeks = less tech blogs readers. These are all good news.

The quality of good company is they should keep giving something new when their "usual" business is saturated.

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#12
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

Agreed, Arrington is not afraid to write interesting things. Wish he wrote more often. btw, its not just compete that shows the drop in readership in the end of 2010

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#13
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

"... There are a few different types of blogger. Those who don't get access to stories and rely on press releases, generally boring. Then there are those who get access to information, but refuse to post about it for fear of pissing somebody off, just as boring and probably worse than the first type. Then there is the type of blogger who gets access to information, and has no problem stepping on toes to get the information out. ..."

So which explanation did TC use for it's lack of reporting on Omnidrive? "Omnidrive - Is This The Sad End?" (technation: story now dead) ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=309892

For the backstory cf: Gawker, Jackson West, "The Omnidrive story you won’t read on TechCrunch" ~ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p12eHH2...

and http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2913315731/

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#14
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

Yes, BUT...

Insider trading is a legal a SEC definition..while selling stock on the 2nd market by itself is not insider trading..given Mike's caution in word use by your story something rings or smells real bad..about Mike using those words to describe something that might not approach that definition.

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#15
post #7

There are a lot of flaws in this analysis... 1. Yes Techcrunch's traffic is down according to Compete but so is the traffic from other sites that cover the same space. In the last 6 months Venturebeat for example is down 73%. ReadWriteWeb is down 38%. Even smaller sites are down. CenterNetworks covers relatively the same space and they're down 38%. By comparison Techcrunch is only down 29%. 2. The author states Micha…

> The author states Michael Arrington making increasingly inflammatory posts as a reason why techcrunch will fail. But in my experience such posts tend to draw traffic.

The article argues the opposite: Arrington is shouting louder and louder in order to stop the traffic from hemorrhaging. Looks fairly true to me, too.

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#16
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

"... There are a few different types of blogger. Those who don't get access to stories and rely on press releases, generally boring. Then there are those who get access to information, but refuse to post about it for fear of pissing somebody off, just as boring and probably worse than the first type. Then there is the type of blogger who gets access to information, and has no problem stepping on toes to get the infor…

Still the same type - or are you asking why Techcrunch didn't cover a story from Valleywag?

I marked Omnidrive as deadpool in CrunchBase, and it isn't uncommon for Techcrunch to not cover a story that has been covered elsewhere, esp since Mike was an investor and was wary of conflicts

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#17
post #5

Techcrunch may be over because it has become irrelevant to the community of entrepreneurs/developers. Michael sometimes writes an interesting column. The rest is like a TMZ for the rich people of the silicon valley. There are real issues like these: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291336 which they refuse to cover

This is crap. TC was always an extension of Arrington's personal connections. He made friends in the valley 10 years ago which allows him access to info that isn't available to others. He's not interested in the obvious crap like that to which you link. Your misunderstanding sounds cultural. I'm not even sure what to make of the "rich peoples" comment.

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#18
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

Forgive me if I've read you wrong, but it seems to me that you're saying there are three types of startup journalists out there:

1) People who rewrite press releases

2) People who rewrite press releases

3) TechCrunch

Said like that, and given that you spent a good deal of time working with them - don't you think you could be revealing a wee bit of bias? (not that the original blog isn't)

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#19
post #18
post #9

I worked for TC for a long time and lived and worked in the same house as Mike for almost 4 years, so I know how he works very well. First, Compete totally gets Techcrunch traffic wrong. Not only the numbers, but the trends would totally not match up with our own internal Google Analytics, and even the data such as top referrers etc. were way off. Compete should not be used as supporting evidence that Techcrunch is f…

Forgive me if I've read you wrong, but it seems to me that you're saying there are three types of startup journalists out there: 1) People who rewrite press releases 2) People who rewrite press releases 3) TechCrunch Said like that, and given that you spent a good deal of time working with them - don't you think you could be revealing a wee bit of bias? (not that the original blog isn't)

I didn't mean to say that Mike is the only type 3 blogger - in my own opinion I would include Mike Masnick, Henry Blodget, Danny Sullivan, the TorrentFreak guys, Om, Steve Gillmor etc.

If it read any other way, it wasn't my intention.

As an example, there was the Scamville[1] story about Offerpal and the offers in games on the Facebook platform and others. I was listening in to some of the calls Mike was making, and he told me about others, and it was apparent that another journalist had the same story a month earlier, but had been convinced not to publish it.

There were entire blogs dedicated to covering the space, but nobody said a word about users getting ripped off with misleading scams. Then when you visit these blogs you find the sponsor squares in the sidebar were the same companies that were involved with the bad offers.

That is definitely 'type 2'

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming...

Re: Why TechCrunch is over

#20
post #10

I hate how people cite Compete.com traffic graphs as "fact". Fact #1 is not a fact at all. Reference point: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/macrumors.com/ (estimated traffic, graph goes down) vs http://www.quantcast.com/macrumors.com (measured traffic, graph goes up) I also like how he cites Compete's numbers for TechCrunch (1 million uniques), but doesn't use Compete's numbers for his own site PostPost. Compete say…

It's terribly inaccurate, based on my experience. For the Feb 2011 (most recent available stat they have), they were wrong by -314%. They should make the fact that their service is inaccurate obvious; otherwise, they're misleading many people.

Their data points are from 2 million people. In the U.S. alone, there are 230 million+ interet users: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_us...

I only took basic stats courses in college, but I know enough to know that's nowhere close to a big enough sample size to be statistically significant.

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