Micro Persuasion: TechCrunch: a Case Study in Micro Media

Monday, June 12, 2006

TechCrunch: a Case Study in Micro Media

If you want to see how blogs are revolutionizing media, all you need to do is look at TechCrunch. The Web 2.0 blog, currently ranked #20 on Technorati, believe it or not turned one year old today.

The path Michael Arrington followed can be replicated by anyone else and it proves that blogs can eat into the mainstream media ad dollars and eyeballs. All you need to do is: a) identify a high interest topic online that currently does not have a blog tracking it, b) write about it very actively and do it well and c) don't be afraid to promote it. Today Michael is viewed as a critical newsmaker. He breaks big stories on his own right and with the help of PR people.

Here's a look at TechCrunch's numbers...

* TechCrunch went from zero RSS readers to more than 59,000 today

* According to Alexa, he site is neck and neck in reach with TechWeb.com and internet.com - three 10 year-old sites owned by big media companies. It's also giving ZDNet a run for its money as well.

* TechCrunch went from zero references per day on Technorati to more than 100

* Federated Media is selling the site at a $20 CPM, in part because it attracts 300,000 uniques from highly valuable eyeballs. Some 81% of its readers are 18-39 and 60% publish their own blog

Now that's success! Congratulations Michael and team.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch

Posted at 06:16 AM in Advertising, Citizen Journalism, Journalism, Research, RSS, Web 2.0, Weblogs | Permalink

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» TechCrunch tells us to dream big from LexBlog Blog
Been seeing all over the blogosphere that the TechCrunch blog is a year old. Took me by surprise its only year old in that Michael Arrington, its publisher, and TechCrunch are cited all over the net as a leading source... [Read More]

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Interesting post. TechCrunch is an interesting combination of insider talk on Web 2.0 venture capital wheeling and dealing and pithy analyses of Web 2.0 tools. As a librarian, I use it primarily to learn about what new tools are out there for us to use in our daily quest to learn how to acquire info most efficiently and quickly—and for free whenever possible. TechCrunch excels at alerting librarians and librarian-like types to tools to check out. Another blogger who does this superbly is Robin Good in the series New Media Picks Of The Week:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/new_media_tools/new_media_picks/new_media_picks_of_the_week_20060611.htm
and Steven Cohen positively owns the space for new tools for librarians (and anyone else who needs to find info on the Internet):
http://www.librarystuff.net/
and Marshall Kirkpatrick is a must read for anyone into Web 2.0:
http://marshallk.com/
These guys have an incredible wealth of knowledge and I feel positively unarmed in the information age if I don’t read them daily and try out what the tools they highlight. They are classic examples of what you outline—they blog often, they elucidate and alert and they write engagingly.
Interestingly, many of the blogs about search per se are tedious and fairly useless in that they are far too enamored of the romance of the venture capital scene. John Batelle typifies that genre. Booooring and fairly useless. Most of us are not of that ilk and the great lunch reportage ultimately doesn’t matter to us or impact us. Same goes for many of the Search Engine Watch postings. Yeah, yeah. Google this and Google that.
Suggestions for a high interest topic online that currently does not have a blog tracking it—something maybe called “Totally Tools,” that would be two or three lines many times a day about Web 2.0 tools without any digression into the family life of the blogger or travel schedule or the library 2.0 agenda or diversions into nouveau corporate babble about the wonders of Web 2.0. Just the tools. No Library 2.0 rah rah and no digression off into the supposed cultural earthquake of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. I work in healthcare and what execs want in that industry is a clear business case, not to be lectured to by Mr. Cool Cutting Edge Silicon Valley consultant. Show me the tools, kind of thing. How can I make the department secretaries (as opposed to teams of engineers) move faster and get more done more cheaply, not how can I make a splash as CEO blogger. At least that is what it seems to me they are thinking. I am way down the totem pole. But I know that the people I work for way too busy for Business 2.0 patter.

And we do have to keep things in perspective. 59,000 is still an average sized town in my state of Oregon. Not exactly earth-shaking numbers compared to, say, the circulation of a print newspaper in average-sized metro area. Some employee newsletters reach that many people routinely.
Also, as all of us who are fascinated by Web 2.0 and sign up for RSS feeds constantly know all too well, it is hard to manage to actually read the postings that flood into our aggregators or email inboxes. How many of the 59,000 actually read each post? As of tonight, for instance, I have 37,226 messages—mostly email alerts of blog postings. Oops!
And, as has been pointed out repeatedly, so far the readers are mostly the affluent, youngish geeky guys. When I hear the nurses and office ladies at work talking of something one of them came across via RSS, that is when the bucks will flow in. The move to the standardization of the “Subscribe” button will help in that respect.

Posted by: Hope Leman | Tuesday, June 13, 2006 at 05:45 AM

Oops--I forgot to mention http://www.solutionwatch.com/

which is indispensable for anyone who needs to constantly monitor the world of Web 2.0 tools. I maintain, though, that we need a blog devoted to Web 2.0 tools with an emphasis on search sans all the schmoozing chronicling. Solution Watch is outstanding. But much of it is about office productivity tools and intranet stuff as opposed to search.

Posted by: Hope Leman | Tuesday, June 13, 2006 at 06:16 AM

Alexa stats are not reliable.

(I don't mean to say that I doubt TechCrunch is as popular as you say, it's really just that I have enough proof from the past to say Alexa stats are unreliable.)

Posted by: Philipp Lenssen | Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at 11:32 AM

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Posted by: yuntrip | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 09:27 PM

Posted by: 12 | Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 09:57 PM

Alexa stats are totally inaccurate, even more so than this dirty Google toolbar feature called PageRank. In general, Alexa users are NOT the general user and so it shouldn't be used for any kind of relation.

Posted by: Micro Media | Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 04:59 PM