

Ask HN: Why does TechCrunch have to be the center of Blogging? - iamdave

To me, this runs contrary to the revolution bloggers tried to start from mainstream media in the early 2000's: we don't need a single source, or a collective of sources trying to peddle media to us.  We are going to empower ourselves, we are going to go forth and present the news.<p>Well, it seems like the contrary is happening. TechCrunch, cNet, et al have effectively become the center of attention when it comes to tech blogging.<p>Maybe it's just that I don't particularly like TC, so I'm probably just wrong altogether, but when Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington bring twitter to it's knees because people flutter around them, eat up, regurgitate and reiterate every.single.thing those two say, it kind of brings back the feeling that if the news didn't come from here, it's not worth being read.<p>What are your thoughts?
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froo
I think you're missing the point - the reason why Arrington/TechCrunch became
popular was because Michael worked his ass off to make sure that he broke tech
news in his niche. He paid his dues and now he's reaping the rewards from it.

There are a lot of other bloggers who do "me too" reporting it seems, who
essentially regurgitate everything they read off other sites.

I'm all for competition, I welcome the day when someone takes Arrington down a
few notches - but unless people are prepared to spend the time to do the hard
work, then they get absolutely no sympathy from me when they're not getting
the audience that they would have liked.

You may not like the man, but you have to at least respect that he works
harder than most, which is why he's at the top of the heap.

Thats my 2 cents.

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TomOfTTB
Honestly this might not be a popular opinion but if I’m being honest I have to
say the "revolution bloggers tried to start" was always a croc. It dismissed
the fact that big news sources got where they were for a reason. That reason
was that they were, at least at one time, the best at delivering information
that people want.

That’s how the world works. You don’t have people checking 1,000 blogs for
their news. Eventually a few of those 1,000 establish themselves as the best
and they become the center of things.

Now there is a natural turn over where big sites stop being the best source
for news and new sites take their place. In that process blogging did make a
difference by lowering the barrier to entry. Michael Arrington started out as
one guy reporting on what he found interesting and became the "blog of record"
which would never have been possible in old media.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there will always be a hierarchy and
every hierarchy needs someone at the top.

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friism
I don't want to discredit Mr. Arringtons efforts (which do look positively
herculean), but many months ago, with posts becoming increasingly scandalous
in their wording I unsubscribed from the TC feed and haven't looked back. If
the stories are important enough, they generally percolate up through other
channels I follow (like HN) and usually in less hyperbolic guises.

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dmoney
Does their success prevent other bloggers from blogging? You can't prevent the
popular from being popular, but you determine the center of your own
blogosphere by choosing whom you pay attention to.

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awad
I actually was thinking of the same thing earlier today. It's not just tech;
I'm also involved in a fashion start up (if you can call it that) and, while
there are general fashion blogs just like there are general technology blogs,
there are indeed only a very few sites that most know about and check back day
to day.

TechCrunch et al have created their own media brands, not exactly mainstream
(though MA and company are making more and more mainstream appearances) and
not exactly small time blogs. The same applies to whatever fashion blogs exist
for the bit that I mentioned earlier. It's not that others are not reporting
on things...they are, we just don't hear them because we don't know they
exist. That's why we have sites like Hacker News and Reddit, to allow anyone
to post anything interesting or newsworthy, but the general public don't
exactly know about their existence. For those of us lucky enough to have
access to these sites, we are already finding a lot of stuff we might not
normally find. What disappoints me sometimes is that I can't get to all the
good stuff that gets posted to this site if a lot of posts come successively.

Feed readers don't really seem to be the answer, though, at least not for me.
Perhaps what we need is a new model. I just have no idea what.

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pingswept
You're trapped in too small a social circle. I suspect that less than 5% of my
friends and coworkers have heard of Techcrunch or Scoble, and I work at an
engineering firm. Globally, their fame is dwarfed by that of washed-up
American 80's pop stars (e.g. Hall and Oates).

Admittedly, if you want news about web startups that will soon fail, they're
hard to avoid, but there is no shortage of other people to pay attention to.

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hs
probably because it's human nature to look for new things

those who blog every day naturally tend to have more followers

it used to be individual bloggers; however the trend is increasingly toward
groups of bloggers

maybe the ultimate is site like reddit / hn (you can think the OP as a mini
blog with a link)

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patio11
I think that my customers do not read TechCrunch and, accordingly, I don't
think too much about them more than that.

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cabalamat
It isn't.

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Zarathu
Agreed.

REVOLUTION TIEM NAO????

