Once upon a time, TechCrunch was about start-ups and gosh they were killing it. I miss those days! Anyone else?
That said, I'm assuming their change in direction over the years has been a business decision. I will always respect that even if it means less TC for me.
http://thestartupfoundry.com. What's old is new again. Paul Hontz had those exact same feelings, and has brought forth a blog that is closer to what TC used to be than any other I've seen.
Email me again (Paul@codesketch.com). It's nothing personal, we just get A LOT of email. We are looking at ways to improve response time. Sorry about that.
Heh, no problems. Like I said, I planned to be persistent. You might think of a way to manage responses automatically so the sender knows you at least received it, to keep relations good.
And, as I've mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of what you're doing, and how you're doing it.
It's been my not-so-private view for some time now Arrington has consciously turned into a professional troll. While TC had great value a few years back as a news source, the purchase by AOL was IMO the culmination of a steady decline.
I'm not sure if the instigation of flamebait headlines and Gawker level journalism were a natural progression for an expanding media outlet which bases its own self worth on impressions and ad-clicks, or a conscious effort to court the attentions of the big-name acquisitors, but the Techcrunch of 2010 was a noticeable step down from the startup/business related organ of prior years.
Viral content spreading via limited-char media such as Twitter is probably encouraging the troll-headline ("Women don't want to run startups"). We know from the AOL Way missives that the major content farms are encouraging Google-Trend following made-to-order 'reporting' rather than seeking out the new. As TC became the go-to place for 'launch' it has become apparent that cronyism was driving much of the content selection, rather than objective assessment of the startup in question - see Quora vs StackOverflow reporting on TC in recent months.
There was a post a few weeks back on HN of someone wanting to produce a successor to TC - a 'back to the old way' site. Whether they will be successful or not, the interesting fact was the public response was overwhelmingly positive, rather than questioning the rationality of pursuing the idea. At the end of the day, it's just a blog. Crunchbase is great, Disrupt is valuable, but if the anchoring blog loses its way, the associated properties will be usurped by someone else.
AOL is the perfect home for (what should be obvious) the TMZ of dotcoms. I'm sure there's a high-to-lowbrow plan within AOL that includes HuffPo becoming their Time Magazine.
Professional troll indeed -- I've had that same thought for quite a while now. Probably it started around the time he posted this about a group of SV 20somethings who went to some Greek island together to party for a week and recorded a drunken lip-sync video. It just happened to be the same time as the beginning of full financial meltdown, but the two events had nothing to do with each other -- except in Arrington's weird mind. (I've always assumed that he was jealous that he wasn't invited. Seriously, dude, you wouldn't have fit in; the guys in the video don't have giant beer guts.)
I've seen a lot of bad writing online, even in reputable publications. But I've never seen ANYONE taunt their readers in comments like Steve Gillmor is doing now.
And I can say something like this since I'm the type of person that spends my weekends reading news and articles.
On the Business Insider, when readers ridicule Henry Blodget about his past, he responds politely with links and explanations about the accusations against him.
His taunts don't even make sense. It seems like he is taking offense to people criticizing his story anonymously, but the way he is asking people for their real names comes off as strange and kind of creepy. And, he isn't addressing any of the (IMO valid) complaints they have about his story.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around what the hell I just read.
So let me get this straight: the author of the article has an argument with his daughter about Lady Gaga, which leads to his daughter getting her iPad and hijacking his AirPlay, which leads to a "kids these days" type of commentary, which leads to him talking about how he missed his deadline.
Which startup is he "obsessively profiling?" Is this a metaphor for something? I feel like I'm the butt of a joke for even visiting TechCrunch.
... which leads to people calling TechCrunch out for the useless article, which leads to him getting all creepy with those commenting, asking for their real names, and implying that finding out people's names is his homework for next week.
I, too, used to at least skim almost every article on TechCrunch back when it was all about startups as it was often the first site to highlight a new company or reveal mergers, acquisitions, key hires, etc. At some point, it crossed my personal "quality" threshold and got lumped together with Gawker Media type of sites where sensationalism trumps quality. I'm sure it's more profitable, but kind of a shame for the technical community.
Their startup stuff now is far to brief, it's pretty much just: "new startup x is similar to y but does z differently, I signed up and it looks pretty cool, watch out y!"
I realize that "star" contributors can command more control (and once upon a time, higher freelance fees) but I am very surprised a TC editor didn't exercise veto power over this post. It brings down the brand.
In addition, Gillmor's childish comments are positively embarrassing, and go against the spirit of Techcrunch's own comment policy, which states "please think of the comments as a conversation between individuals and interact with civility." (http://techcrunch.com/techcrunch-comment-policy/)
I have always found Gillmor's writing absolutely impenetrable. His posts meander and never seem to arrive at anything resembling a point. I almost feel like he intentionally avoids making points.
That aside: Wow. I thought this would link to an article that might have a flaw or two or was not 'acceptable' from some cutting edge geek snob POV. (Sorry for expecting something along these lines on HN, I am new around here!)
But this is really the absolutely worst article I have ever seen on a tech-related site - including sites that never even had any 'rep' for a start, as opposed to TechCrunch - plus the author is definitely being mad creepy in the comments.
Eh, it is just what happens when a tech site reaches a certain point of popularity. In the early days, a site fights to be unique and high quality to get the hits. Once a certain level of hits is assured, there is a weird switch where since every post is going have a certain number of views, the writers start to care less about quality and get into a feedback loop that tells them they still are doing well cause they are getting hits. And even worse, the outliers like Steve's strange ramblings and MG's flamebait are seen as better cause the novelty drives more attention to them than a normal, well researched and written post.
I still find it entertaining, but you just can't take it seriously. It is probably best if you never do.
No, they haven't jumped the shark. You were just exposed to Steve Gillmor's writing. While the article is pointless, its one of his more coherent posts. He has written much worse TC articles than this.
I think it is just weak writing, the story seems to be about new technology and how we interact with it, which is fair TechCrunch fodder. However the opening sentences provide no hook and no solid message as to what the article is about. On top of that the writing style is something out of a Sunday magazine, rambling, relaxed and undirected.
TC writes whatever will generate ad impressions or curry favor with someone they wish would like them, and AOL's acquisition makes that official policy.
No, they haven't jumped the shark. Happy Days started to suck long before Fonzie jumped the shark tank. That episode was just the final straw. TechCrunch isn't that bad - as long as you pick and choose which articles to read. If you're wasting time reading every TechCrunch article linked to by HN, then you have bigger concerns than whether the articles are consistently high quality.
Maybe HN article submitters could do us a favor and bracket the author's name in the title for those of us that have biases for or against certain writers at TC, NYT, etc.
Agreed. If you stick to Arrington, Rao, Butcher, and a couple of others, you get some good content. There are just a few 'bad apples' there who drag it down.
I only started reading tc about a year ago and even in this amount of time I've seen the downturn. Steve and alexytosis(whatever) both write meaningless dribble.
Why does snarky title editorializing have this many upvotes? Do we really want this showing up on the front page of HN every time someone reads a TechCrunch post they dislike?
Steve Gillmor is nothing but himself - love him or hate him, his writing style hasn't changed. There's nothing new here to complain about.
I am pretty sure most people are submitting techcrunch articles just for karma points. That and they come standard with aggressive linkbaiting headlines.
Linkbait indeed. It seems like a pretty common tactic on some blogs. I find it mildly disturbing since the same blogs often look down on trolling, when in reality, an argument could be made that they are actually part of the problem.
I don't really need Karma points for anything. Maybe I should just have written a 2 sentence post with the submission title and put a link to the TC article.
Steve Gillmor is a child. The last article I read by him, he was stalking and creeping on people in the comments. It was very, very weird and the comments on this article seem to imply that he's at it again.
Seriously, I don't care for TC, but they need to get this jackass under control. After mentioning that he was responding immaturely to commenters, he replied with "What is your real name?".
I don't know if you folks are aware of this but Steve Gillmor in his previous career was a record producer — he worked with everyone from Firesign Theater to Grace Jones. That's why is writing is so filled with references to music. You can say what you want about Techcrunch but Gillmor is one of the writers they have who is still worth reading. He doesn't give a damn about chasing page views and if you read in between the lines he often has something interesting to say. And his charm is that he doesn't give a damn about the trolls in the comments section.
Also each generation of technology has its publication: In a sense if Techcrunch is feeling dated it's because we're entering a new era. Once upon a time in the web 1.0 era we were reading Slashdot, F*cked Company, InfoWorld, MacWeek, the Silicon Alley Reporter a few others that are pretty much non-existent today. If Techcrunch is now dead so is Web 2.0 in a sense (and other brands of that era like SXSW, Mashable, etc.).
Wait a minute. Who ever read TechCrunch for the writing in the first place? No one with any taste for the written word, that's for sure.
As far as Gillmor is concerned, yes, he has a style, and some people like it for some reason. Personally I think he tries way too friggin hard, and he's not 1/10th as clever as he wishes he were. You'll do better looking for depth of references and its delivery watching Gilmore Girls.
Yeah, I know. I simply don't have the time to read between the lines so much in order to find whether or not it's worth reading. There are myriad other tech writers covering the same beat without requiring all that work.
That said, I'm assuming their change in direction over the years has been a business decision. I will always respect that even if it means less TC for me.