TechCrunch's Next Move
Would love to hear your thoughts on what a brand like TechCrunch should do next from a product/business perspective. What's their next move to deliver value, generate revenue and invigorate the brand?
I assume I am in their target market, I am an SWE that likes consuming industry news. When I land on their webpage though, I struggle seeing information worth staying for.
The current top story is about Googles quantum chip that was on the front of HN all day yesterday. Their article is a summary of the release yesterday with what seems to be a summary of some arguments about multiverses, and a brief description of qubits vs bits.
It feels stale, I read about this yesterday from the primary source.
The article itself feels very surface level with some sensational dressing that feels like it is for clicks. It makes me wonder who this is written for? It seems too detailed for non-technical people (qubits vs bits), but doesn't go deep enough for technical readers (multiverses are deff real, trust me!).
That is just a single article, but when I look around, it doesn't feel like an outlier to me.
The value of actually visiting their website feels low. I think part of the problem is I don't read the content as "authentic". By that, I think their delivery leans too far to the click baity side. I recognize everyone is playing that game, I just don't think they are striking the right balance.
After I finish reading an article, it's nice to read thoughtful discussion about it. Its what makes HN so good. Slapping a comment section on it, isn't really enough though. Comments that are just emotive at the subject, or simply non-sequiters are no fun to read and having to wade through that lowers the value of the experience. The verge has a website with comments that _can_ be worth reading because some people will actually talk about the content.
Also, is the audience for their big conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, the same and the audience for their news coverage?
What do you think makes the Verge better in terms of comments? The content?
If I were guessing, I would think their conference would skew towards tech professionals. Their articles show up on news aggregator apps, like google news, that probably brings in a ton of non-tech or tech adjacent people.
I think its really hard to cultivate a good comment section. Its pretty low effort to make off hand emotive comments ("this is bad and you should feel bad" kind of comments). Negative engagement is the most engaging engagement, so any reaction to that can encourage that behavior.
I think through social norms that get reinforced with moderation helps discourage some of that. That leaves room for people to ask questions and create discussion about the ideas in the article.
This is an example of a comment thread on the verge that I thought was interesting. If you view the full discussion you will find a bunch of uninteresting emotive comments as well.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/10/24318259/gm-cruise-shutd...