The Rise and Fall of TechCrunch
I was sent an interesting post on the blog of Duncan Riley which had some interesting Web 2.0 blogosphere news. Okay, Web 2.0 blogosphere news is, by definition, not interesting, but you know what I mean.
Duncan Riley, of course, is Web 2.0’s version of Scott McClellan. He used to work for Arrington at TechCrunch and after he left, didn’t seem to have a lot of respect his former boss.
The news: Mashable looks set to overtake TechCrunch in traffic metrics, and by one account, already has.
The graphs Riley provides speak for themselves so I don’t need to rattle off numbers. comScore’s figures don’t paint a pretty portrait of either blog, but that notwithstanding, it’s intriguing to me that Web 2.0’s biggest content landfill (Mashable) is giving TechCrunch a run for its money. What little bit there is in the blogosphere anyway.
To be fair, comparing Mashable and TechCrunch is a bit like comparing a rotten apple to a rotten orange. Mashable specializes in knocking out lists of the top 1000 sexual positions that can be used on Twitter as well as amateur-quality social media news (often regurgitated). TechCrunch specializes in Silicon Valley tech news with a more pseudo-intellectual, self-aggrandizing slant.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is a boorish, egotistical Silicon Valley insider with a gut and bags under his eyes. Mashable’s Pete Cashmore is a European kid with a square jaw who moonlights as a socialite on the Web 2.0 “party” circuit.
Unlike Cashmore, who, to his credit, seems to be enjoying his Web 2.0 lifestyle while running a content mill, Arrington has found it more important to “win”. He’s called for the death of just about everything, criticized mainstream journalists for their supposed conflicts while writing off (and at times embracing) his own. And he’s made it clear that he sees TechCrunch and companies like it as the future of media.
Unfortunately for Arrington, he apparently mistook his being in the right place at the right time as some sort of entrepreneurial prescience. A former attorney turned unsuccessful entrepreneur turned Valley groupie turned blogger, Arrington capitalized on the Web 2.0 craze and then, perhaps not knowing what it meant for him, amusingly celebrated its death late last year.
Since then, TechCrunch has been, for lack of a better word, marginalized. Not a surprise: the Web 2.0 hype was all it had to feed on in the first place. And so it comes to pass that TechCrunch finds itself in a position where a blog like Mashable is about to eat its lunch.
Which is, of course, ironic, since Arrington has made it a point of eating others’ lunches.
For somebody who extols the virtues of entrepreneurship, the Valley penchant for innovation and the joy of winning, Arrington provides the perfect case study of an entrepreneur who didn’t execute and didn’t adapt.
Two things demonstrate this.
The Blog Roll-Up That Never Happened
In March of 2008, Arrington got an idea. He wrote:
At some point it’s going to become painfully obvious that the only way to get to a massive valuation is for the top talent to band together in a company where they each have an equity stake and therefore a reason to work all night on that next great story. They’ll each have their own space to stretch their legs and let their personality run around a little. Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business.
It can happen. In fact it’s almost certainly going to happen. But if you bloggers go out there and raise $3 -$5 million on say a $10 million valuation, you’ve just priced yourself out of the rollup. That option will be closed to you, and you’ll be stuck out in the cold, taking life support payments from Federated Media or another ad network, and having a generally awful time running your business.
What I’d like to see, and even be a part of, is the blogger equivalent to the 1992 U.S. Mens Basketball Dream Team. That team could take CNET apart in a year, hire the best of the survivors there, and then move on to bigger prey.
One might have assumed that Arrington was in a position to make this happen. After all, TechCrunch was flying high and with all of Arrington’s VC buddies in Silicon Valley, it’s hard to imagine that Arrington wouldn’t have been able to convince one or two of them to put up the capital if he truly believed he could roll up a bunch of A-list blogs and turn them into a $200 million/year empire. What the hell would he be waiting for?
He ended his post with a warning to blogs accepting venture capital:
So think twice before taking that venture money, guys. You may be shutting more doors of opportunity than you realize.
Apparently none of those doors of opportunity were being opened by Arrington and he couldn’t find the time to build that $200 million/year business. He never made a move.
The Blog Network that Never Happened
That, of course, wasn’t entirely surprising given that Arrington never followed through with another grand scheme: a crunch blog network. Sure, he’s expanded TechCrunch geographically and added CrunchGear, MobileCrunch and TechCrunch IT (none of which, incidentally, are anywhere near as popular as TechCrunch) but this wasn’t quite the empire he said he was going to build.
From Wired’s June 2007 profile of Arrington:
Already, he’s laying the groundwork for a whole stable of clued-in, hard-driving news blogs: MusicCrunch, SoftwareCrunch, TelecomCrunch. “The goal is to have 15 to 20 sites 18 months from now,” he says . He plans to hire popular bloggers and create a homepage with the best news from each site to draw readers. From there, they could drill into each topic in more depth. His aim is to become the premier technology news site on the Internet, one that goes head-to-head with CNET and potentially with other technology news sites, including Wired.com. Arrington figures he can get by with just a few dozen employees. “With 25 to 30 paid writers against CNET’s huge cost base, they won’t be able to compete,” he says.
Well over 18 months later, there’s no sign of those 15 to 20 blogs. As far as I know, TechCrunch doesn’t employ 25 to 30 paid writers. There’s no homepage “with the best news from each site.” And CNET is still in business.
What happened? Well, to put it simply, Arrington didn’t execute, for whatever reason. Sure, he continued to talk about his CNET-killer in the form of the aforementioned blog roll-up that never took place but clearly it was mental masturbation.
TechCrunch in Decline
For a guy who loves writing about startups, entrepreneurship and innovation, there’s something ironic about TechCrunch’s current state of affairs.
Arrington has failed to execute on the path that he publicly laid out for TechCrunch. Instead of actually capitalizing on his fleeting window of opportunity to build the blog empire he talked about, he, well, simply talked about it. And we all know how cheap talk is.
But what’s even worse: Arrington has failed to adapt. Instead of recognizing that the trend on which he built TechCrunch was over and that change was in order, he’s stayed the course. The result: TechCrunch is today what it was in 2006, minus the supporting hype. Which, unfortunately, the blog can’t thrive without. Barring a Web 2.0 bailout, I think it’s safe to say that the world has moved on.
That, of course, is something Arrington seems oblivious to. He recently hired Sarah Lacy, who is nothing more than a discredited Web 2.0 hype promulgator herself (and who might be as self-aggrandizing as her new boss). And he’s made some subtle changes to boost monetization, such as forcing readers to sift through multiple pages of comments, generating more pageviews in the process. Not that this really matters – you can access TechCrunch inventory through ad exchanges for a pittance.
None of this is becoming of a property that it’s rumored Arrington has been trying to sell for a hefty sum for over a year, unsuccessfully of course. While TechCrunch isn’t going to lose all of its traffic overnight, one need only look at the quality of the comments to see how far TechCrunch has fallen – a long way from when I found it enjoyable to post comments there myself.
Newsweek has it right: “Stick a fork in this one — it’s done.”
Love this piece, and I think you are spot on! The very maestro of web 2.0 should have seen the demise coming if he was truly the expert
Hey Drama, remember me? Its been a year so probably not. Just wanted to check in and see how our predictions turned out? I think your words were.
“Are newspapers and traditional news outlets finding that the Internet is impacting them? Absolutely. But when you look at the total amount of revenue being generated and the recent acquisitions in the space, I think it’s clear that the industry is still more-than-viable.”
How are your predictions working out for you?
“None of this is becoming of a property that it’s rumored Arrington has been trying to sell for a hefty sum for over a year, unsuccessfully of course.”
Yea, allegedly his vacation was actually just him traveling around trying to get someone to buy Techcrunch for $100 million. No one wanted to buy it.
“What happened? Well, to put it simply, Arrington didn’t execute, for whatever reason.”
The reason is because of his ego. If he really wanted to seriously compete with CNET, he would have called Cashmore and talked about trying to merge Mashable and Techcrunch. His ‘92 Dream Team fantasy was the biggest pile of bullshit that’s ever appeared on his blog. He had no intention of building a real dream team. A real dream team would have, ofcourse, forced him to shelve his ego because he would have been forced to have other “superstars” in the Tech industry on equal footing him, not merely act as employees.
Arrington said: “What I’d like to see, and even be a part of, is the blogger equivalent to the 1992 U.S. Mens Basketball Dream Team. That team could take CNET apart in a year, hire the best of the survivors there, and then move on to bigger prey.”
Well, I’ve no doubt that this statement is true. A Techcrunch, Mashable, Venture Beat, ReadWrite Web etc. merger would have been a true dream team and probably would have crippled CNET. But for obvious reasons, it’s simply impossible to form such a team. For one thing, Techcrunch tries to pretend that Mashable doesn’t exist. Cashmore said during an interview that Techcrunch refused to invite ANYONE who worked at Mashable to the Crunchies. Way to go on your quest to form a dream team, Mikey! You’re a great unifier. Treat your only real competition like garbage.
Jason: I didn’t remember you until you stopped by and reminded me. I’m so glad you’re still reading!
I’ll let people read my full posts about professional journalism and take from them what they will (including the common theme: new media isn’t a viable replacement for “old media), but I will note two things.
First, “traditional news outlets” covers far more than United States newspapers.
Second, you conveniently left out my next sentence:
As for the fate of the American newspapers, I could care less. I don’t own one and I don’t have investments in any.
My predictions have treated me quite well, however, thank you very much. As you may know since you’ve apparently been reading, I was prepared for the meltdown of the financial markets and the current recession and I’ve done well managing a small investment fund. In my personal accounts, I went short a number of companies in early 2008, including GOOG. You do the math.
I purchased a new S65 late last year and am going to be looking at buying cheap properties in the United States soon so life is treating me well.
How are you doing? How are your ideas working out for you? Are other people still coming up with them too and screwing you over by having the gall to execute on them? Did you ever get your 5% from Ignighter?
Hold out buddy. You’ll get your 5%. Just keep up the faith and the great work.
I like how you back away from your statements. You and Jim Cramer should hang out you have a lot in common. You can both see far enough ahead to tie your own shoes. Be careful on the backing up thing, one day you might fall of a clif.
Oh, and your “I was prepared for the meltdown” post is off. Their is a larger underlying issue, which as you should remember I wrote a post about in 2006, about the next revolution, which you dismissed. Its great that you were prepared a month before the major decline. Maybe you should have your eyes checked?
Jason: I know you have reading comprehension issues (I suspect you have dyslexia), but the post I linked to contained a list of comments I made back in 2007 and in early 2008. Those comments were not written in September 2008. You can find them all on this blog, which I know you have the time to do.
But I’ll throw you a bone:
http://www.drama20show.com/2007/12/20/the-internet-social-networks-and-employee-productivity/
December 2007.
You can also read the predictions I made for 2008 (which included a note on the economy), and the results.
Bottom line: there’s a reason I’m managing other people’s money and there’s a reason that nobody wants to give you any for your brilliant “ideas.”
That notwithstanding, as I’ve said before, being rich is far more important than being right. I’ve got the bank accounts, what do you have? I see. 5% of nothing.
Wow! So you are admitting you know nothing and you are wrong. It takes a big man. I wonder why your readers continue to read your blog?
Oh, and no I don’t read your blog. I just heard your pal Murdoch lost 57% of his net worth so I figured I would remind you of your great ideas.
Getting back on topic a bit, have you noticed that Techcrunch reads like an obituary lately?
These headlines from the past 2 days are depressing:
Triple Deadpool: FileFront, Cruxy, Documentary-film.net
Apple’s iPhone App Refund Policies Could Bankrupt Developers
Troubles At Imeem, But Company Says No Shutdown Imminent…
“Music insiders are saying a shutdown of the company is imminent after a failed attempt to sell the company or raise more cash.”
Trusera’s Health 2.0 Portal Nearly Out Of Money
Techcrunch: The Happiest Place on Earth
Will: you’re ignoring all the positive headlines.
Didn’t you see these:
We Put Pepsi’s New Aquafina Product To The Test
YouTube Adds A Twitter Button
To be honest, the part of my heart that still has an ounce of empathy feels for Arrington. Can you imagine how difficult it is to run a blog like TechCrunch on a daily basis these days? It must be really hard coming up with interesting stuff and you can see that the battle is clearly being lost.
YouTube Adds A Twitter Button LOL!!
the aquafina post is to get some seo and to show off the dog – i feel for the dog
youtube adding twitter button is huge news – perfect story for erick to write
what about tc50 – that’s the big one – i mean huge – amazingly huge!