In a scrumptious move to monitor the startup hype news on TechCrunch, scuttlebutt around the blogosphere has a couple of german entrepreneurs setting up a site called TechCrush.com
The whole idea was spawned over at Steve Boyd’s blog, /Message, wherein he wrote previously:
Perhaps we need a dark doppelganger to TechCrunch — a TechMunch — a blog that religiously revisits every app that debuts in TechCrunch exactly six months later, and determines if these apps are now failures or successes. Of course, most apps are not unambiguously either, so TechMunch would be hard to pull off. Much harder than simply heralding new apps as they appear.
… which was followed by a reply:
Hi Stowe,
your idea of a TechMunch really sounded compelling to a colleague and me (two internet-entrepreneurs from good old Germany). In our opinion such blog would be a useful contribution to the blogosphere.
We will rise to the challenge with “Techcrush”. I guess we will launch this week at http://www.techcrush.com.Check us out, cheers
Yves and Lutz
Fuckedcompany.com is a site which parodied the name “FastCompany” and follows the death of internet companies. Cynicism from the Bubble 1.0 writ large, one might say. ;) One wonders if that is the sort of direction TechCrush will take. Jaded criticism isn’t really necessary at this point — but some method of checks ought to be in order here to balance TechCrunch.
In all fairness, Mike Arrington has gone on record at the Future of Web Apps summit about the “flops” he’s profiled on TechCrunch. Filed under “what were they thinking”, he is known to list: Inform, Gather, PubSub, Browzor, Jigsaw, Squidoo.
But otherwise, I mean, hasn’t anyone else noticed that most TechCrunch profiles tend to be … uncritical?
Seems like TechCrush will follow each of TechCrunch’s profiled web2.0 companies 6 months after the profile – sort of follow up on that initial write up, and see how they’re doing. I doubt that they’ll be as “bad” as fuckedcompany.com, but we’ll have to see. With fellow-Canadian Mark Evans noting their launch, one wonders if what kind of groundswell we can anticipate based on TechCrunch’s popularity.
5 Comments
i think this kind of thing is a good check against techcrunch and will keep us honest…I will say though that when companies start to fail we cover that too. My lawyers are pissy about our trademark and want us to send them a letter. I need to contact them to talk when they launch.
One of the big problems with news blogs online, in my opinion, is that they report on the Big Thing and then move on. Follow-ups are rare unfortunately.
The way I see it TechCrunch has the same problem as Engadget and Gizmodo. It writes and sometimes hypes products from what it knows, sometimes with some criticizm attached and sometimes not. The news post arrives when the project is announched and another one is done when the product hits beta/gets a shipdate. But then what? Ongoing coverage of everything (every startup, every gadget) would be too much to handle, both for site and reader, so the main part of the material tips in favor of the products.
Michael Arrington, how about doing monthly follow-ups, short n’ sweet? That’s the way I would do it in your case, but you know your business way better than I do.
Nevertheless, I enjoy all blogs mentioned above.
Well, I am all for keeping people/sites/politicians honest. Transparency is nothing but a good thing.
Let us know how that lawyer-ing thing works out though.
TechCrunch probably does not have the geek roots that Digg has, so I wonder what the startup community reaction will have your proverbial hounds at these guys.
As I recall the overall reaction was one of sadness (Digg lost its innocence that day?), anger (bullying the little guy), and a little bit of righteousness (you have to defend your copyright).
If no one else will comment on it, you can be sure I will. ;)
Cheers
t @ dji
Fully agreed. Michael, frankly said, it’s not our intention to violate your trademark or copyrighted materials — Techcrush tries to follow Stowe’s idea (he will be a co-author, BTW), to be a valuable addition to the blogosphere on its own, both design- and contentwise.
Please contact us at any time, and we can sit down and talk things over.
Otherwise, Techcrush will try to feature balanced reviews and statistics-links on start-ups. Plus every posting sports a success-meter, where the crowd wisdom can cast their vote if the new app was a succes or failure in their opinion. Check us out, we’re online already.
Cheers, Lutz
http://www.techcrush.com
Wow, never knew about this site – it’s like TechCrunch but without the blatant anti-Google bias.
4 Trackbacks
[...] TechCrush Gounded Before It Gets Chance To Fly? September 21st, 2006 at 10:09 am by Tony I reported a few days ago about TechCrush (and has been noticed by a few others) the outfit started up by a couple German entrepreneurs. [...]
[...] Sept 18: Deep Jive Interests discusses the whole thing. This is (I think) the first time I hear of it. I check out the site, note that the name and logo appear very close to techcrunch, and that the content looks very similar to techcrunch. I call my lawyer and say “I love this…do we have a trademark issue.” He says “yes, a big one. when people do this, if you don’t try to stop it, you lose the right to try to stop others in the future.” I comment on the DJI blog “i think this kind of thing is a good check against techcrunch and will keep us honest…I will say though that when companies start to fail we cover that too. My lawyers are pissy about our trademark and want us to send them a letter. I need to contact them to talk when they launch.” [...]
[...] A few days later TechCrush shut down temporarily for some apparent legal issues. I had suspected that lawyers for TechCrunch got concerned about trademark issues since their names were so similar, particularly because Mr. Arrington had mentioned it might be the case. It quickly gained traction for a few hours in the blogosphere as Valleywag and Techmeme picked up on the topic. [...]
[...] Techcrunch, the company, on the otherhand reports that they have acquired FuckedCompany.com. Just in time for April Fools day but it’s the real deal! The news is all over the web right now. [...]