sorted by: recent | see : popular

Content Tagged with Ideas + network

Blink, and six months go by. Ever since I made the move from Time Inc. to TechCrunch, my life has become a whirlwind of nonstop blog posting, little sleep, and a growing addiction to news feeds, Techmeme, and my Blackberry. Last week, I wrote my 600th post (this one is No. 617). The boxes I brought over from my previous career are still stacked, unopened, in my TechCrunch office. A lone painting from my three-year-old son adorns the wall. I have not had time to unpack or even buy a bookshelf to put things on. Fourteen years worth of stuff, and it still amazes me I don’t need any of it.

The journalist in me has been avoiding this post (too navel-gazing, too self-absorbed), but the blogger in me can’t help it. Media is changing—how it is produced and how it is consumed. The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding and I want to get some thoughts down on this transition before I forget what the old world was like or feel too comfortable in the new one. (Fair warning: If you don’t like long posts, skip this one).

Just as more and more blogs are building up professional writing staffs, more and more newspapers and magazines are requiring that their writers start blogging. A quick glance at the Techmeme Leaderboard, for instance, shows that its top spots are almost evenly split between blogs and traditional news organizations. Note that the blogs are all of the professional variety, complete with writing staffs (TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, Silicon Alley Insider, GigaOm, VentureBeat, etc.) and that the highest ranking news sites (CNET and the New York Times) also have the most active journalist bloggers.

But remember that all the big blogs that have turned professional and are now out there trying to build small media businesses started out as personal. Also, remember that these blogs (TechCrunch included) represent a tiny, tiny sliver of the millions of blogs out there. Unlike others, I don’t draw as sharp a dividing line between professional and personal blogs. Any blogger can rise to the level of contributing to the public discourse. Those that do so on a consistent basis—such as Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Nick Carr, Mark Cuban, Fred Wilson, and others—gain wide followings, and with that a responsibility to their readers that is equal to any journalist’s.

A more useful distinction is that there are sources of information that readers trust and sources of information that they don’t. Once someone reaches that level of trust, their responsibility is to tell the truth as best they can.

For me, blogging and journalism began to blur long ago. I took over the Business 2.0 blog (which became the Next Net) from Damon Darlin, now technology editor at the New York Times. That was back in May, 2005, one month before Michael Arrington started TechCrunch—which just goes to show that Michael and I have been on the same wavelength from the start. Of course, back then, he took blogging much more seriously than I did.

At Business 2.0, my blog was always a side project—although it grew to 50,000 feed subscribers. I was paid to write, package, and orchestrate articles for the print magazine—in addition to other sidelines, which included organizing mini-conferences and dabbling in Web video. Eventually, blogging became more important to the magazine—all writers and editors had to start one. But it could never quite shake that extracurricular tinge.

Working at TechCrunch is a completely different experience. For one thing, I no longer write long-form, narrative journalism. There is not much time for story-telling (except for weekend posts like this one). It is mostly breaking news, reporting facts and providing analysis. At TechCrunch, I am completely focused on blogging, 24/7. With a few exceptions, no single post is very difficult to write (unlike an in-depth magazine article that can require 50 interviews and weeks of travel, for instance). But taken as a whole, blogging is actually harder. That is because the blogging never stops. Just ask my wife and kids, who now mock me by repeating back my new mantra: “I’m almost done, just one more post.”

Putting out TechCrunch is like riding a bullet train. When I jumped aboard, it was already going 150 miles per hour. Six months ago, the main TechCrunch site was attracting about two million visitors a month and it was ranked No. 4 on the Technorati 100 list of the most linked-to blogs. Today, six months later, we are within spitting distance of three million visitors a month (2.9 million, to be exact), and last week we overtook Engadget for the first time to reach the No. 1 spot on the Technorati 100. (We’ll see how long that lasts, the Hufifngton Post is right on our tail).

So what is the TechCrunch formula? It is hard to say other than obsession. The main TechCrunch blog is written by four of us—Michael, Duncan, Mark, and me. (When I began, there were five, but Nick Gonzalez decided to opt for the comparatively saner hours of a startup). Despite our small size, we are a global organization. When not traveling, Michael and Mark write from California, Duncan writes from Australia, and I write from New York. Somebody is always online—often all of us. Michael literally never sleeps. It is really unhealthy.

What we do at TechCrunch is actually pretty simple. We write about Web startups and the larger tech companies that try to either copy or acquire them. Depending on the day, I could be liveblogging the launch of the Amazon Kindle, arguing about free speech in the Internet age, uncovering secret projects at Google, giving Yahoo unsolicited acquisition advice, or writing about a hot new startup.

There is always something else to write about, and not enough time to cover it. But we live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves. We hardly have time to proofread our posts, as anyone who’s come across one of the frequent typos in TechCrunch knows. Luckily, our readers love to point out our mistakes in comments. They are our copy editors and fact checkers. (We love you guys). Our philosophy is that it is better to get 70 percent of a story up fast and get the basic facts right than to wait another hour (or a day) to get the remaining 30 percent. We can always update the post or do another one as new information comes in. More often than not, putting up partial information is what leads us to the truth—a source contacts us with more details or adds them directly into comments.

Some people question whether TechCrunch is even a blog anymore rather than a professional media site. But that distinction is becoming increasingly meaningless. The truth is that we are both. We compete with traditional news organizations, but with a small fraction of their staff. That is our competitive advantage. We certainly cover the news and do original reporting, but we also discuss news reported by others and are not shy about voicing our personal opinions. We are as much a filter as a source.

There is something about blogging—the immediacy, the give and take, the point of view—that helps it compete with traditional media for attention. And we don’t want to lose that. We like to speculate, argue, and debate—sometimes in ways that traditional journalists may think is unseemly. That’s okay, as long as our readers keep coming back for more.

Because what is a blog? It is a conversation with readers. And you don’t have to start a conversation knowing all the facts. But it helps if you end up with more than you start out with, and if you turn out to be right more often than wrong. Otherwise, people will stop listening to you—the same as they would with any media source.

(Hubble Telescope photo of colliding galaxies via Oswaldo).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

The Crunchies Awards kick off at 7:30 pm PST at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. The event is over sold at this point, but if you want to attend virtually, you can. Event sponsor Mogulus is live streaming it. It’s should be live from around 6:30pm PST - you can watch the prep occur on stage by clicking above. For a full live streaming player with chat outside the player window go here.

If you are attending, please make sure you are here no later than 7 pm. More details are here. Please tag any photos you take of the event “2007crunchies.”

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Founders Fund, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Framr (an ecommerce start-up offering custom picture framing, launching tonight), Lotus Vodka, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, Searchles, our official live streaming partner of the night Mogulus, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Also tune into TechCrunch after the show around 9 pm for the full list of winners and some highlights from the night.

For a full live streaming player with chat outside the player window go here.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Last night we gave an overview of our thought process for coming up with the award that will be given to each category winner for the Crunchies event on Friday night in San Francisco.

The award itself, created by Clockwork Apple, is 14 inches tall and created in a very hard, very heavy cast plastic. The inspiration comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie a tribe of prehistoric ape-men interact with a black monolith that appears near them. The monolith inspires one of them to create the first use of technology - a bone used as a tool and a weapon. The video clip of the segment is in our original post on the award.

We are honoring startups that have innovated in technology; thus, we feel the award is symbolic culturally and appropriate. The additional flourishes, such as the baseball cap and jersey, were the idea of the artist to modernize the setting. And the ape is beating on old technology with his bone - a symbol of the disruptive nature of the technology world, where young startups often feast on their older, slower siblings.

One of these awards will be given to the winner of each of the twenty categories for the Crunchies (21 categories actually, we have an additional surprise award). The winners’ logos will be added to the award.

Very last tickets just became available

We are down to the last few available seats for the awards. We held a few hundred in reserve for sponsors, nominees and press. The ones not taken (about 60) have been put into the general queue and can be purchased here. The event starts at 7:30 and should end by 9. We’ll then have a party until about midnight. Everything is taking place at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

The first set of tickets for the Crunchies, which went on sale last night, sold out this morning. We will put another batch up for sale on Tuesday next week at around 10 AM PST. I apologize in advance for having to turn away email requests for tickets. Given space limitations at the Herbst Theatre, and the fact that there needs to actually be a seat for every attendee, space is going to be tight.

There are a limited number of orchestra and box seats available to event sponsors. Please contact Jeannie Logozzo for details.

If you are a nominated company, you get two tickets alloted to you, and we’ve reserved more for purchase if you want to bring more of the team. We are contacting all of you separately with information.

More than 50,000 votes have been cast to determine the winners. Make sure your opinion counts, too.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

I am very happy to announce the first (of many, hopefully) annual Crunchies, a year-end startup competition and award ceremony/party that we are coordinating with three other blog networks - GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb and Venturebeat (click on the links to see their coverage).

More details will be coming soon, but the idea is to let the community decide who to nominate, and who wins, in a number of award categories. And the whole thing will be topped off with a big award ceremony and party in San Francisco. Who are the most compelling startups of the year? We’ll know soon.

There will be sponsors for this event (see the event page for details if you would like to participate). Big thanks to Sun Microsystems Business Analytics for stepping up to be the charter sponsor of the Crunchies.

On a side note, the four participating blogs will be sharing the decision making process and the economics of the event. This is what I love best about blogging - even though we all compete very hard, we recognize that there is a community around what we do, and sometimes it’s important that we band together as part of that community.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Can't see the video? Click here

Just five days until TechCrunch40 next week in San Francisco. As of right now we have 27 tickets remaining, which means it should sell out sometime tomorrow afternoon and registrations will be cut off. There will be approximately 900 people at the conference, which is about double what we had originally planned (and hoped for).

Forty companies are preparing to launch products (actually, 39, but more on that below) in front of the full audience and panel of experts, and will compete for the $50,000 prize. An additional hundred startups will be showing their products in the demo stations. On top of that, Yahoo and AOL will be launching products at the event, and we have keynote sessions with Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Chad Hurley, Michael Moritz and Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Calacanis has been coaching startups at Sequoia Capital over the last few days to perfect the demos.

As I said above, we actually only have 39 startup launches planned. The last spot on stage on the last day will go the audience choice from the demo pit companies. Each attendee will be given two tokens (one for each day) to give to the demo pit companies they like best. Whoever gets the most tokens gets a spot on stage and is fully eligible to win the $50,000 prize.

I am really looking forward to the event, and I am absolutely humbled by the outpouring of enthusiasm we are receiving from companies and attendees . I’ve never been associated with a production of this size - there are literally thousands of moving pieces and any number of things can go wrong. There will undoubtedly be a hiccup or two during the conference, but with any luck all of the planning and hard work will pay off, forty startups will get the launch event they deserve and another hundred will get to show their stuff to nearly 1,000 people.

See you Monday! If you are attending, look for additional logistical details and announcements on the TechCrunch40 blog.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

I just returned from our party in central London to celebrate Seedcamp Week and the relaunch of TechCrunch UK & Ireland.

Robert Loch, who’s famous for his London parties, generously agreed to have the event at his penthouse London flat in Soho. His parties are so notorious (and I use that word intentionally) that we had to keep the location secret and only email it out to attendees who’d registered. Even so, 50 or so people showed up “off list” and were able to get in.

Total attendance was about 250 people, including most of the venture capitalists in London who invest in the Internet, most of the Seedcamp attendees and a ton of other entrepreneurs. Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis also dropped by for an hour or so.

One thing I need to remember for our next party - Londoners drink a lot more and stay out far later than their Silicon Valley geek counterparts. We actually ran out of alcohol completely at around 10:30 but Heather soon had another shipment brought in. I left at 1:30 am to get back to my day job. As far as I know the party is still going strong.

TechCrunch UK & Ireland Relaunches

The primary reason for the party was to celebrate the relaunch of TechCrunch UK & Ireland, after a nearly year-long hiatus. I am very pleased to announce the return of Mike Butcher as the editor of the site. Mike knows everyone in London - seriously - and he has deep experience writing about startups at The Financial Times, The Industry Standard and The Guardian, among other publications. We are very lucky to have him rejoin the TechCrunch team. Look for his coverage of Seedcamp on Friday morning London time.

See more coverage of the relaunch at The Guardian.

Thank You To Sponsors

Heather put the party together in a week after we nearly canceled due to a lack of an appropriate venue. Still, a number of sponsors stepped up to cover costs of the event and supplied excellent food and drink. Thank you to all. And special thanks to the Seedcamp team for working with us to organize and promote the party.

Event Sponsors:

Olswang is a leading law firm renowned for its work in media, communications, technology, real estate and more recently, biosciences. Founded in 1981, the firm has grown to a staff of more than 500 and has offices in London, the Thames Valley and Brussels. Olswang is organised with both a sector and service line focus, enabling it to deliver specialist legal advice backed by a strong business perspective.

WorldTV is an exciting, second generation video site offering a slick and user-friendly interface for online aggregation, personal archiving, search and viewing of multi-definition video content in Flash, including access to more than 25 million video clips from a range of popular, well known sites. The service lets users create their own full-screen online TV channel, complete with MTV style logo and all at a cool and easy-to-remember URL. Based in London and Limerick, Ireland, WorldTV will launch out of private beta in November, and is an idea from Smashing Concepts! - the UK ideas and incubation company.

Food & Drink Sponsors:

Thanks to Mucho Mas Burrittos (seven days old, founded by former Skype guys, better than Chipotle) and Hummus Brothers for feeding us, and Stormhoek for supplying the excellent wine for the event. The food and wine was awesome and you kept everyone appropriately fed and watered.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

More good news around the upcoming TechCrunch20 Conference in San Francisco this September: Ron Conway, Loic Le Meur and Sarah Lacy have agreed to join the Expert Panel, bringing the total number of experts who’ve agreed to participate to 16. The full list of experts is here.

The deadline to submit applications to launch a startup at the event ended last week - and we had over 600 submissions that we are reviewing now. If you are one of the companies that doesn’t make the cut into the twenty finalists, don’t worry. We’ve got a cool program that we’ll be announcing that will give you the opportunity to have a presence at the event.

The early bird registration discount ends on July 16.

More on the new experts:

Loic Le Meur

Loïc Le Meur is a well-known French serial entrepreneur who has created and sold multiple Internet startups, including B2L (sold to BBDO), RapidSite France (sold to France Telecom), Tekora (sold to Access-Commerce) and Ublog (merged with Six Apart.) Working on his next venture, Loïc continues to be an active investor. He organizes Europe’s largest annual web event, LeWeb3, that gathered 1300 participants from 37 Countries in 2006. Loïc’s blog is one of the most popular in France, read by more than 250,000 unique visitors per month.

Ron Conway

Ron Conway is one of the Internet’s pre-eminent angel investors. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Red Envelope, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “dealmakers” in 2006. He is an active advisor for a number of Internet companies and also very active in community and philanthropic activities, including Vice Chairman of UCSF Medical Foundation in San Francisco. Most recently, Ron has been leading the “Fight for Mike” Homer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD.)

Sarah Lacy

Sarah Lacy has been covering start-ups and venture capital in Silicon Valley for the last seven years. She has been a contributor to the San Jose Business Journal. Most recently, Sarah was a reporter and blogger for Business Week. She co-wrote last year’s famous magazine cover story on Digg’s founder Kevin Rose titled “How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months.” She is currently taking a year off from reporting to work on a book covering Web 2.0.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0