Why TechCrunch is over | Hacker News Reader

Why TechCrunch is over

yared.com

285 pointsphilipDS62 comments

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 Michael Arrington making increasingly inflammatory posts as a reason why techcrunch will fail. But in my experience such posts tend to draw traffic. More to the point Arrington has been at this for a while, he uses analytics and he's not stupid. If the inflammatory posts weren't getting results he wouldn't continue to post them.

3. The author uses Wavii as an example of how TechCrunch is no longer a "kingmaker" because they've pushed that startup and it hasn't gotten major funding. But said product hasn't even launched yet so it's really too early to receive more funding (they already got $2m in seed funding and that was only 9 months ago). So the example doesn't really hold.

4. I actually kind of agree with this point in that I don't really enjoy Paul Carr, Sarah Lacy or Steve Gillmor. But again the site has analytics so I assume they'd be gone if everyone agreed with me. So clearly they're drawing a crowd regardless of how I feel. The author needs to realize the same is true of his opinion.

5. The last point boils down to "the author doesn't like Arrington so he'll fail". Well...a lot of people haven't liked Michael Arrington in the past and he's succeeded in spite of it.

I'm not saying Techcrunch doesn't have its problems but they're far from "over"

> 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.

I found this quote to be pretty good:

"If it was not for MG Siegler (Apple fanboyism aside) and Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch would be a content-free environment. The rest of the writing has become incredibly self-referential and stale. Paul Carr has the magical ability to consistently write articles that say nothing other than what he did yesterday. Sarah Lacy keeps writing about startups in Indonesia that no one cares about, because even startups in first world countries like France can’t seem to make it. Alexia Tsotsis has no clue about underlying technology or any context but continually injects her opinions and should instead write for PopSugar. Steve Gillmor occasionally adds a rambling grandpa perspective. Robin Wauters, Leena Rao and Jason Kincaid are all competent at summarizing the news, and even add a bit of context, but their content is no different than what you can read elsewhere."

Yeah sometimes i feel TechCrunch is biased. I am not comfortable with people who write news on behalf of some company. We expect them to write the real news rather than supporting some and reprimanding others.

Then you need to readjust your expectations from false idealism to Mike's reality.

Yeah, i am in verge of adjusting my expectations.

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 says PostPost gets 18k uniques/month yet he cites 100K uniques. Why not compare apples to apples?

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.

> 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.

Just like you can't get a statistically significant result about the 300 million Americans by phoning a few hundred people.

"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."

I am not a statistician, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that.

The real problem isn't the small sample size (2 million is really large), it's probably that they're not representative.

If that were a random sample you'd be completely wrong -- that's more than enough to get extremely accurate numbers.

What's more likely is that compete is based on a panel [1] [2], and the members of that panel tend not to include the type of people that read tech sites.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/25/compete-data/

[2] http://www.quora.com/Where-does-Compete-get-its-data-from

While I disagree with most of Arringtons written opinions I do respect the fact he managed to build a highly successful blog. I do however think that the quality has disappeared from techcrunch and 90% of the stuff that gets published on TC is tabloid crap. This is why I've taken TC off my RSS reader and now instead read The Startup Foundry.

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 fading.

The number of re-tweets, comments, referral traffic, twitter subscribers, Techememe headlines, HN headlines, story leads etc. is as high as ever. Monthly uniques are nowhere near the 1M compete would want us to believe they are.

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.

Mike is of this variety. You could say that he is the prime example of the new breed of process journalist - he would rather a (now rather low) error rate on 1-2% of stories in order to get the other 98% out there for the audience. I have intimate knowledge of how he works and how he puts stories together - to the extent that even now, with him on the other side of the world, I can read a story on headline and put together what went on behind the scenes to get this story out (such as the Facebook stock story). He is constantly on the phone and emailing people. He literally has hundreds of people on speed dial, on skype and in his email contact list - he would send dozens of single-line emails each day building information up around the story, and over the years has gotten very good at both extracting responses from people first, and then figuring out what is really happening by triangulating.

Sometimes the stories are posted a little early, and you see that process play out through a post being edited or through multiple posts that make up a larger story (like Scamville, and almost certainly this Facebook stock story). Arrington and his stories reflect the scene - if he is pumping a startup, it is because through talking to dozens of investors he keeps hearing about it. He rarely is the first to step out, but is a lot better at capturing mood and opinion and then amplifying it. He can also put his finger on what is wrong and what is right - and Angelgate was an example of that.

That also applies to this Facebook stock story. Do you really think he would just pick on him for no reason? Or is it more likely that he got a tip about it, confirmed it with one more person, phoned Facebook to talk about it (who asked to be off the record), contacted the guy in question, and then posted the story? A blogger who just makes things up and is wrong would never have an audience.

You only ever have to talk to anybody who has worked with Mike, any startup who has gone through the process with him, or any other blogger who respects that process, to understand that there is something special going on there. Mike has a lot of people he can count on in his circle and within the industry because of that. I watched him approach almost every word in a post with a lawyer's caution - he would constantly review even after a post is published and the possibility of not getting something right totally eats at him (to the point where he can't sleep). You have completely mischaracterized him as being careless, from a guy who used to wake me up at 5am just to check the smallest details of a story. Just shows that you totally do not understand what and who you are trying to diss at.

If you don't like this style of story - then don't read it. There are plenty of blogs that just churn out press release after press release and appease those who don't want to see the boat rocked. But don't attempt to string together poor traffic stats and two or three misses from a collection of thousands of hits into some narrative about Techcrunch failing.

If Techcrunch earned a dollar for ever blog post that has been written about it failing or jumping the shark then it could easily double revenue. Fact is that right now it still dominates startup news, is one of the main outlets to reach a startup audience if your are launching a product, and even with Mike writing less it is not fading anywhere - since his style is contagious and has been picked up by other writers.

I have seen this trend cycle of things being cool when new, and then suddenly uncool when popular, play out too many times not to be wise to it. There is nothing wrong with reading Techcrunch and other blogs, this isn't winner takes all. I enjoy reading HN, Reddit, The Startup Foundry, etc. This isn't grade school where you need to pick a team to be on and do your best to fight the other tribe (especially including personal attacks, which completely makes you cheap) - if you think you can do better in any way, try it, keep writing with Venturebeat and don't bitch about it - the readers and audience will decide based on quality not on preaching.

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

"... 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/

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

"... 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 ..."

My tone is skeptical Nik because I read stories, information and posts with my BS detection at maximum when I detect ambiguity.

I'm interested in ambiguous stories because it's possible to find in them both the truth but sometimes non-truths. Take for instance a story which I posted on HN 3 years ago, "The Google Way: Give Engineers Room". [0] I posted the story because it was interesting. But it took a fellow HN'r Karzeem [1] to suggest something wasn't quite right. You can read the post for yourself. I wasn't thinking Google is bad or looking for subterfuge by the New York times. But that's what we got. I emailed the New York times for clarification and it turns out because the story was in fact a "Submarine". A plant by Google and the Times to make Google appear a great place to work in the guise of an interview. Except it wasn't. You can read it yourself on HN.[2] karzeem and myself agreed this was a great article not because of the content, but because it exposed the mechanism the Times could paid placement as stories by hiding it in the Fashion section (not the hard news section) and how Google positions itself.

The story behind the closure of Omnidrive is ambiguous.

I first picked up the inconsistencies when an article in a conservative local business magazine, BRW mentions Omnidrive not only in the top 100 Web 2.0 companies in Australia, but in the top 50.[3] How could this be? Omnidrive for all intensive purposes was in the deadpool? So I contacted Renai LeMay a local journalist who worked at ZD Net to ask, "why was Omnidrive inclused?". His reply Omnidrive was active. Timing matters here. I asked LeMay in 2008JUL08 but the deadpool lists Omnidrive as "officially closed in September of 2008" [4][5][6] Which is it? The duplicity makes me think the ambiguity was for a reason. It might not be, but I'm suspicious. Is it possible in the ambiguity in this story was used as a smoke screen for other reasons?

    As the major investor in Omnidrive I am stunned not to have received any 
    information from Nik on what’s been happening over the last few months. 
    I have emailed him a number of times, but have not had a single reply. 
    The last I heard he was flying around the world, after launching 
    Techcrunch IT, and also building the Techcrunch tablet for Michael 
    Arrington. [7]

I'll let you, the reader ponder the reasons for ambiguity by pointing you to Clay Cook, a fellow Australian and ex-angel.[8] I follow through with stories like the closure of Omnidrive, not because I have any particular interest in Omnidrive or (you) Nik, but for reasons of clarity. If I read a story with a degree ambiguity, I like the clarify the reasons why, to analyse and understand. If a statement is made, test for it's validity against what I know. Will it stand up to a degree of scrutiny? I like follow-up posts like this because I think it's a good real-life lesson for fellow HN's to not take information at face value. Startups are by their nature complex but fragile things that constantly fall over and fail.

    Lesson: Your investors are here to help you, keep them informed 
            and you have a much higher likelihood of receiving help. [9]

They are run by optimistic, risk taking individuals who like take charge with technology, who value making new things and maybe, just maybe short circuit the "money-problem". The trip from technologist to entrepreneur to successful entrepreneur is complex and requires many skills, technical and personal. I think the most important skill to foster is to "be-good".

"Be good", not to be virtuous, be good because the algorythm is stateless and as a strategy, it works. [10]

Reference

[0] Bharat Mediratta, Julie Bick, "The Google Way: Give Engineers Room"