#1. Sorry for not blogging these past few days. My daily schedule has gone crazy.
#2. This is true for the next few weeks too, between 20 December and about 5 January 2007, because I’ll be in UK. I’ll bring my notebook on, but blogging will still be fairly slow. If anyone wants to meet with me there just give me an e-mail.
#3. Techcrunch is on the menu today.
We’re doing TechCrunch’s Profile, not the other way around
So, what’s this ubberly talked about blog (because it IS a blog) ? It’s a technology blog, it involves the genious of Michael Arrington (which I’ve had the pleasure of knowing only through a video conference – and I read almost a 16 months timeline of posts in this evening/morning – YES, about half his blog’s content – I found invaluable information and interesting resources), was founded in June 2005 and has ~ 140k RSS readers (Feedburner stats).
It’s pretty interesting as how Michael saw the TechCrunch phenomenon at it’s infant stages:
Over the weekend we launched TechCrunch, a new blog that is dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business and service. See the “about” post here.
The link “here” is a broken (the post doesn’t exist anymore), probably because after some time, it didn’t reflect TechCrunch’s goals and ideals anymore, or it was written in an early stage, in an unprofessional way. Or perhaps the current about us page replaced that post. Or who the heck knows ?
He still maintains that same goal:
TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to new companies, we will profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.
What does that tell you ? He had the right ideea from the start, he believed in it, he didn’t shifted to new type of content because the initial one didn’t caught attention or traffic. He just maintained his developed project, and he became a hit. That’s determination, excellent project management and planification.
I am reading him, he is not reading me.
Techcrunch’s trend
Let’s take a few steps backwards:
1. June 20th 2005:
TechCrunch has been up for one week and we now have 63 subscribers to our Feedburner feed.
2. July 11th 2005:
TechCrunch turned one month old today. We are tracking about 400 RSS subscribers and everything’s going great. It’s a ton of fun (and an honor) to write about new companies, and in the process get to know some very interesting people.
So one month after it was launched, Michael already raised 400 RSS subscribers. Imagine that. I mean, after a year, I have about 500 RSS subscribers on my blog. And my blog is popular enough (for my industry). I agree, not the same targets and audiences are involved here, but still.
3. Present:
TechCrunch has been selected as part of the News.com Blog 100, a feature in which News.com editors and reporters are helping find the best news and views on the Web for the convenience of our readers.
Moreover, TechCrunch now has more then 140.000 RSS subscribers. Read more about their 100.000 RSS subscribers mark.
Techcrunch’s traffic
If up until now you could only guess the traffic of TechCrunch (because they don’t state the numbers as public), there are the exact TechCrunch figures and numbers for 2007:
As you can see above, most of TechCrunch’s visitors are geeks too (notice the Firefox versus IE ratios).
If your company ends up being reviewed by TechCrunch (Guy has a great interview with Michael Arrington on how to get in TechCrunch), you can get your company the visibility it needs in it’s infant stages. Up to 100.000 visitors will read about your company.
Cristian Mezei is the Founder of Infomarket Network, a web marketing agency
based in Bucharest, specializing in search marketing, social media and usability/accesibility. Cristian shares some of his views in Seopedia, his personal blog.