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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 ne

by nikcub 16y ago

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.

zaidf 16y ago
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.
- nikcub 16y ago
  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.
rdl 16y ago
I actually really like Crunchbase, more so than anything else TC-related. It's really useful to have a quick way to see what investors have invested in something, or what kind of portfolio an angel has.
thaumaturgy 16y ago
I have an extremely unpopular point of view on this, because, unlike the most vocal of HN, I believe there are some things that can't have a price tag attached to them. But: > The prob is that as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google etc. Yes, you can, dammit. If you mean, "as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google, etc. and still make tons of money and eventually sell out to a media empire", then OK, we have some common ground. I'll go along with that. But for all of the hundreds of thousands of readers you somehow amass by following the same stories that everyone else follows, there are -- admittedly a much smaller number of -- readers like me who are starving for something that isn't like everything else that's already out there. I don't care what Apple or Google or Verizon is doing, and I especially don't care that you're covering it versus anyone else. It'll show up in my numerous news feeds. It'll show up on HN. It'll show up on Reddit. It'll show up in Google News. Or someone will ask me about it at some point during the day. What's valuable to me -- and, I think, enough other people -- is getting the information that other people aren't getting. My clients rely on me to keep an eye on the new and the up-and-coming, and it's getting harder and harder for me to gather that kind of information, because there are diminishing reliable sources for it. You guys and Gizmodo and everyone else all compete for page views on the same silly topics and it's not helping anyone. I'll agree that you probably won't get to drive a fancy car by running a business without compromising principles, but let's not kid ourselves that we can't run businesses without selling out. Hell, that's probably pretty much the only reason that anybody reads anythign written on 37Signals anymore -- because they're constantly reminding everyone that they haven't sold out, and they're successful. (Some of them even get to drive nice cars.) And for that matter, it would be lovely if, for a change, I'd get to see someone treat the matter of startups like it wasn't a glamorous Silicon Valleywood lifestyle. Y'know, like a little bit of attention towards all those countless shmucks out there that are building products, taking care of customers, making money, and not dressing like rock stars or scheduling interviews every week.
- nikcub 16y ago
  Actually I should have clarified, I didn't mean that it is impossible to ignore the big stories, more that it is difficult to. Totally agree that it should be possible, but there is a temptation when you start getting press releases etc. to pump the easy stories out.

by nikcub 16y ago

zaidf 16y ago

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.

nikcub 16y ago
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.

rdl 16y ago

I actually really like Crunchbase, more so than anything else TC-related. It's really useful to have a quick way to see what investors have invested in something, or what kind of portfolio an angel has.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

I have an extremely unpopular point of view on this, because, unlike the most vocal of HN, I believe there are some things that can't have a price tag attached to them. But: > The prob is that as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google etc. Yes, you can, dammit. If you mean, "as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google, etc. and still make tons of money and eventually sell out to a media empire", then OK, we have some common ground. I'll go along with that. But for all of the hundreds of thousands of readers you somehow amass by following the same stories that everyone else follows, there are -- admittedly a much smaller number of -- readers like me who are starving for something that isn't like everything else that's already out there. I don't care what Apple or Google or Verizon is doing, and I especially don't care that you're covering it versus anyone else. It'll show up in my numerous news feeds. It'll show up on HN. It'll show up on Reddit. It'll show up in Google News. Or someone will ask me about it at some point during the day. What's valuable to me -- and, I think, enough other people -- is getting the information that other people aren't getting. My clients rely on me to keep an eye on the new and the up-and-coming, and it's getting harder and harder for me to gather that kind of information, because there are diminishing reliable sources for it. You guys and Gizmodo and everyone else all compete for page views on the same silly topics and it's not helping anyone. I'll agree that you probably won't get to drive a fancy car by running a business without compromising principles, but let's not kid ourselves that we can't run businesses without selling out. Hell, that's probably pretty much the only reason that anybody reads anythign written on 37Signals anymore -- because they're constantly reminding everyone that they haven't sold out, and they're successful. (Some of them even get to drive nice cars.) And for that matter, it would be lovely if, for a change, I'd get to see someone treat the matter of startups like it wasn't a glamorous Silicon Valleywood lifestyle. Y'know, like a little bit of attention towards all those countless shmucks out there that are building products, taking care of customers, making money, and not dressing like rock stars or scheduling interviews every week.

nikcub 16y ago
Actually I should have clarified, I didn't mean that it is impossible to ignore the big stories, more that it is difficult to. Totally agree that it should be possible, but there is a temptation when you start getting press releases etc. to pump the easy stories out.