How TechCrunch must change to stay relevant to the startup community | Hacker News Reader

How TechCrunch must change to stay relevant to the startup community

quibb.com

34 pointssandimac23 comments

TechCrunch has nothing to do with journalism. It's a startup tabloid. There's nothing wrong in this and clearly there is a strong demand for that among readers. If you want in-depth, read Ars or Wired or Inc. For tech trash? TC.

TechCrunch is definitely not a journalistic paragon[1], but I think the term tabloid is misplaced. Valleywag was the definition of a startup tabloid back in the days.

[1]: http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-wh...

A couple weeks ago, I did an analysis of TechCrunch by analyzing the data from its Facebook page: http://minimaxir.com/2012/10/questions-equals-reponses/

In that analysis, I found that month-over-month, response rate (in terms of average Likes and Comments on news stories) seem to be stable, and increasing. While an increase in pageviews may be caused by linkbait titles, if people are responding to articles more frequently, we can assume that they're "relevant", in this case.

A lot of the link-baiting articles or headlines just seem to be gaming the Hacker News hivemind. I don't know whether that's a problem with TC or HN, frankly. Probably both.

The article seems to suggest that the best way for TC to be relevant is to post shorter bits and long form articles written by entrepreneurs. I believe what's being described exists as "PandoDaily," which statistically speaking, you are probably not reading.

Yes, it's true that most technology writers haven't gone out to try their hand at founding startups. Most founders also haven't tried their hand at technology journalism, and it's hard not to notice that guests posts on blogs from founders are usually vapid cheerleading of the form "there is an unaddressed market problem in field X and there is a lot of opportunity in solving X," where "X" is whatever field their startup is in.

There are founders who are good writers, and people who write regularly will get better at it. But there are also a fair number of journalists, particularly in "new media" like, uh, websites, who have enough of a technical background to have some idea what they're talking about when they write. Is it better to have articles written by solid writers with unexceptional technology backgrounds, or articles written by people who've successfully gotten money but aren't necessarily good writers (and might still have unexceptional technology backgrounds)? Personally, I'd rather go for the former.

I formerly read TechCrunch for Arrington and MG Seigler, since they were both pretty "entertaining" (read: ridiculous).

With them and that drama gone, there's little reason left to visit.

I drifted away after they left too. There's not much personality there. It feels like Mashable, a list of announcements and articles that don't provide much insight. No soul.

As with anything that becomes popular, TechCrunch gets a lot of hate in the tech industry. I scan through its feed almost daily, mostly digesting just the headlines.

I find value and entertainment in its long-form, insightful content (typically written by guest writers like Nir Eyal, Semil Shah, etc.), funding announcements (knowing what's funded matters), and even its link-bait, sensational articles. I don't think TechCrunch is trying or should be THE source for deep analysis or discussion. There are other sources for that (e.g. Quibb, Quora, individual personal blogs like Joel Gasconigne)... and that's OK.

No mention of the number one issue. Stop writing about themselves. They think they're the story half the time. Inside nods and winks. Crap back and forth between writers. Petty little vendettas with other writers/institutions/organizations/whatever ...it's pathetic and childish.

Shifting to Facebook comments shows they care more about the (in the long run questionable) benefit of Facebook sharing, over quality of discourse. Once upon a time the comments section of TC posts could be as good as the article. Now it's spam, trolls, and "Johnny this is your mom, why don't you call me?".

It worked when Michael Arrington was there, because he was a bit of a celebrity himself. Lots of people loved him, or at least loved to hate him. Maybe that was just in the tail end of his time there, when he had established himself as a celebrity by writing lots of controversial stuff, getting publicly slammed for it, then firing back. But you can't leave out the first step - writing an initial article which genuinely stirs things up a bit.

It also helped that Arrington was a brilliant writer with a real nose for a tech story.

Link bait is not going to go away as long as the standard metric for "success" is page views. It's what blog sites and MSM sites tout to their investors, board members, and advertising clients.

The first thing they should do is make sure their website stops crashing tablets and smartphones. Rendering text articles should not be that difficult.

It does seem to have stopped crashing my iPad at some point.

They shouldn't completely change what they do but focus on quality valuable content. When I read something on AVC, Paul Graham's Blog or Ben Horowitz' blog I find direct value. I learn something new or how to fix a problem I'm facing. Many TechCrunch posts are "Is Instagram for Video a big market?" or "Why the internet is dead?". You sometimes get clicks but it devalues the content.

I don't mind funding announcements when they're mixed with product announcements or are an overall profile. I like how Sahil did it with Gumroad, he announced Gumroad has raised X amount of money and has launched our product and the article included a video interview. Copying a press release or quoting a company blogpost doesn't add value.

Many people still value TechCrunch, it's source for investors and influencers too, to track companies they may be interested in investing in. If TechCrunch just became editorial it would lose this and most of the value.

You can say "add value", but a press release that was posted on my site reposted on TC word for word is adding value - or at least, potentially adding value - to me. Just because it's published doesn't mean anyone had seen it - getting it in front of a lot of eyeballs is a certain amount of value in itself.

Adding value to the reader. Why the reader should read their post vs the Venture Beat quote. As writers that should be their aim.

TC is going to get worse, not better. AOL hasn't even gone full retard with them yet, this is all we can expect...

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Pure Garbage, puregarbage, pure, garbage.

Why should I care whether they are relevant?

Because the tech industry, like all others, has a large element of fashion - and a lot of people (like it or no) are followers of fashion. The New New thing, etc.

That has nothing to do with Techcrunch per se. People will find something else if TC dies. Big whoop.

I think that ship has already sailed.

Easier for digg to come back to my bookmarks than techcrunch.

That means never.

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