

The Math of TechCrunch: Is TechCrunch Still About Startups? - mjgold
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/12/math-of-techcrunch-startups/

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zcam
> 1\. TechCrunch is now 22 times more prolific than its founding year

> TechCrunch now covers 10 times more seed-stage startups

quantity != quality

It used to have a lot less noise/signal ratio on TC, it used to have decent
quality posts (and editors), and a TCrunched effect that barely exists now
since a post gets buried quite fast given the post rate.

These days getting mentioned on TC doesn't do/mean much, you end up between a
new iphone speculation or some non-story about [insert web giant here].

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SoftwareMaven
Those aren't even the important numbers. With 22x the number of articles and
the ratio of small and mid stage startup to tech giant articles half of what
it used to be, even _finding_ the articles in the noise is a joke.

Then, once found, we have to deal with the quality problem you mention.

TechCrunch left my reading list almost a year ago for these reasons.

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tuhin
What do you use then to just keep yourself aware of new startups coming up? I
am not looking for sites like BothSidesofTable and others from VCs or
Cofounders. I am looking for a site that jusat tells me X is a cool service
that does this and launched last week.

Sites like Startupli.st and betali.st have too many useless (sorry to those
working hard at them) sites which makes it difficult to go and check each one
of them.

So yes what other sources exist to get a superficial overlook of new startups.

~~~
petercooper
I can't answer for SoftwareMaven but I use the same sources as where I get my
news, such as HN. Any startup worth its salt is content marketing, blogging,
podcasting, or whatever, and its stuff comes up on sites like HN.

That said, sites like ReadWriteWeb and Mashable also cover the beat well.

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nateberkopec
I'd read a seed-stage only TechCrunch...is there some way to filter TC to do
this?

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SoftwareMaven
Try <http://thestartupfoundry.com/>

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shivam14
Excellent analysis and something that well quantifies a general feeling that
long-term TC readers have had.

The real takeaway for me though that you found a creative way to get your
startup on Techcrunch and probably get a lot more eyeballs than just your
press pitch may have received.

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citricsquid
Techcrunch isn't really about startups, it's about companies in this
technology generation. Whether they're new or old doesn't really matter,
"Startup" is just the _hip_ term of the moment. It'll die eventually.

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hvs
I'm unclear what you mean by the "hip term of the moment". You are aware that
that term has been in use for at least 30 years, and most likely longer,
right?

And yes, TechCrunch started as being about startups.

~~~
citricsquid
The term in relation to technology. It seems 90% of what people now refer to
as a "startup" is a dumb website that someone made in a couple of days that
has no real _business_ behind it and will never be anything more than a dumb
website. People will eventually stop calling every damn thing on the internet
a startup and it'll have meaning again.

Techcrunch covers technology, not "startups", it covers big companies (Google,
Apple, Microsoft etc.) actual start ups and other technology stuff. The same
is here at HN, a lot of what is posted here as a "Startup" isn't and it's
people just using the term _because_ it's hip. Like "app" and "social media",
it's a fancy term people like.

~~~
btcoal
Agreed. I am also not a fan of using "startup" as a strict noun. I think of it
more of an adjective. That is, companies can be in their "startup" phase. Too
many people consider startup as a business category in and of itself.

Moreover, even useful websites do not constitute a business, startup or
otherwise. I'm sure there are plenty of nascent businesses that techcrunch
would never cover just because they are not web-centered [citation needed].

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mikle
I feel punked. The picture explaining their classification of startups has a
blue underlined sentence. Clicking it just opened the picture, instead of
bringing me to a list of top 100 sites as declared by google.

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mjgold
Sorry, TechCrunch asked for JPEGs instead of tables and that link stayed in
the original table. The JPEGs are also low-quality so I'm going to try
creating higher-quality ones next time.

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iaskwhy
You should go with PNG instead of JPG, it's more readable since it avoids
artifacts when text is present on the image.

~~~
mjgold
Thanks for the advice. I'll look at sending PNGs next time.

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staunch
Sacrificing quality for profit works in the short and maybe mid term. Long
term they'll lose their core audience and be replaced.

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nhebb
Why are Android and iOS are categorized as companies, separate from Google and
Apple respectively?

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mjgold
TechCrunch uses tags for companies and a few products. Android and iOS were so
common that I included them to give a sense of what TC covers within those
companies.

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clobber
Short answer: no

