Wow! Techmeme is still around!
Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#12You could say that about any tech blog of that era—RRW, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. The point is that tech has thankfully grown up, and they lost it to Bloomberg, NYT, FT, et al.
I'd say NYT and FT have very little coverage of startups and Bloomberg has occasional startups. Techcrunch is still the leader for stories like "Company A has raised $B million to do C" which my friends and I are very interested in when we are interested in C. (e.g. where are you going to find a job doing C? what are the prospects for your own startup idea around C?)
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#13Wow! Techmeme is still around! https://techmeme.com/
And so is upstract.com (fka PopUrls)
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#14You could say that about any tech blog of that era—RRW, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. The point is that tech has thankfully grown up, and they lost it to Bloomberg, NYT, FT, et al.
I'd say NYT and FT have very little coverage of startups and Bloomberg has occasional startups. Techcrunch is still the leader for stories like "Company A has raised $B million to do C" which my friends and I are very interested in when we are interested in C. (e.g. where are you going to find a job doing C? what are the prospects for your own startup idea around C?)
Venturebeat does most of this.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#15> But in the end, TC is no longer relevant... Here’s the saddest thing: it should be. Startups haven’t gone away. Any media startup could essentially recreate Arrington’s model and start selling little ads while profiling startups. Fun can be had poking holes in Valley blowhards, and there could be reams of content to be had by telling people how to be successful in startup land. But TC won’t do that anymore. The aut…
I remember noticing years ago (say 2008) that TechCrunch was heavy on stories about Facebook and Google long after either company ceased to be a startup.
I was told back then that this is a function of their readership which is not really interested in startups and is more interested in FAANG or whatever you call it these days.
I post quite a few "Company A has raised $B million to do C" articles to HN and I find that, despite HN being about startups, not a lot of people care if they haven't heard of company A before. It puzzles me a lot because if you are interested in starting a startup or working for a startup or selling things to a startup this is the foundation for your business intelligence.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#16They still have a lot of market power. To get placed in them you need to go through a marketer with contacts and that costs quite a bit of money. They publish all this junk stuff but it's just to get more eyeballs. Centralization of this stuff means that these gatekeepers become more valuable. A real pity.
do they really matter anymore? I remember them from the pre 2010 days but even then it seemed to me like linkedin for startups just without the social network thing, i.e. suits posting boring things. These days I can't remember clicking an article linking there ever.
It doesn’t matter, but companies can still get something out of it. For instance, if you’re trying to look more credible, you could share and pin your oped, quote or brand mention from TC on social media. This might fool someone who’s just glancing at your profile to figure out if a company is legit. No clicks involved and all it takes is for the person not to know how much TC has gone downhill.
Having your brand linked to (or even just mentioned) on sites like TC is also something seo spammers swear by too.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
do they really matter anymore? I remember them from the pre 2010 days but even then it seemed to me like linkedin for startups just without the social network thing, i.e. suits posting boring things. These days I can't remember clicking an article linking there ever.
It doesn’t matter, but companies can still get something out of it. For instance, if you’re trying to look more credible, you could share and pin your oped, quote or brand mention from TC on social media. This might fool someone who’s just glancing at your profile to figure out if a company is legit. No clicks involved and all it takes is for the person not to know how much TC has gone downhill. Having your brand lin…
I worked for an overfunded startup that somehow got an article in TechCrunch despite the authors not understanding what we were doing but it's fair to say that everybody struggled with understanding what we were doing.
I tried to pitch a few other stories to their writers with no success.
My favorite writer of theirs from back in the day was Kim-Mai Cutler, I spoke with her once and got the feeling she would have been very receptive to a good pitch if I had it but at that time I didn't. It's no wonder she ran off to be a VC because she developed great industry connections doing what she was doing.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#18> White dude CEOs like Brian Armstrong and Jesse Powell came out hard against DEI efforts and even paid employees to leave, which led, incidentally, to morale at their companies so low it could be measured in millisieverts. But they were making money, baby, so it was all good.
> So, by all measures, Alexandr Wang’s MEI bullshit was just that, bullshit
Amazing, I don't think he gets it. His rant about white dudes while the person being critiqued is an Asian dude. You don't have to think hard about why Asian people might value merit in a system that previously penalized them for their race?
> Haje argued that Wang was a wang.
Comments like this really highlight the hypocrisy and lack of actual principle behind the stances of these people.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#19Wow! Techmeme is still around! https://techmeme.com/
I hate seeing Techmeme links because it always guarantees I'll need to click yet another link before getting to the original URL. It's like a useless middleman.
Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way
#20For a moment I thought it was about HN.. for some reason.