I started writing TechCrunch one year ago, on June 11, 2005. Looking back, it’s been the best year of my life, although there were also some incredibly difficult times as well. I’m sure years from now I’ll have more perspective on things. All I can say for now is that I’m exhausted.
For people interested in statistics, here they are. This will be the 884th post on TechCrunch, and 23,713 comments have been left on those posts. Hundreds of companies and products have been featured here over the last year. Traffic and RSS subscribers continue to grow – there are around 65,000 RSS and email subscribers based on my Feedburner count, and TechCrunch serves 1-2 million page views per month. TechCrunch is now my full time job, and then some.
I’ve looked back at some of the milestones, always marked with a blog post. Six weeks after the beginning, we had 500 RSS readers and I decided it was time for a redesign. Fred Oliveira, who’d previously criticized my design skills, came in and built a great new look for the site (see it here).
In October, I launched CrunchNotes, a new blog where I could write more freely about whatever was on my mind.
I remember writing this post, thinking after a long day of writing, that six months had passed, when really only five had (I changed the post title after publishing). At that point, last November, TechCrunch had 8,000 RSS readers.
In January, long time blogger Oliver Starr partnered with me to write MobileCrunch, a blog focused on new companies and products in the mobile space. MobileCrunch recently passed the 3,000 RSS subscriber mark, and is going strong.
In February, TechCrunch France launched. TechCrunch France is now one of the largest blogs in French, if not the largest, and was recently added to the default feed in Yahoo Mail France. My friend Ouriel Ohayon writes the blog while working full time as a venture capitalist in Tel Aviv, Israel.
TalkCrunch, a weekly (ish) podcast, launched in March. I’ve learned two things about podcasting since then. First, I love to talk to people. Second, I hate editing sound files. On the topic of podcasts, I want to thank Steve Gillmor for including me on the Gillmor Gang. I love being on those weekly podcast calls.
Lots of people have written guest posts on TechCrunch. Fred Oliveira, Keith Teare, Nik Cubrilovic, Frank Gruber, Adam Bouskila and Neil Kjeldsen have all written from time-to-time. Thank you to all. More recently, Marshall Kirkpatrick has joined and will be taking a big part of the writing load off of my back (more on that in a future post).
I also want to thank Media Temple. This is an incredible hosting company that has not only grown with me, but has provided superb customer service along the way. I just can’t say enough good things about them.
And of course, the star team at John Battelle’s Federated Media Publishing has made it possible for me to work on TechCrunch full time.
I think that the best part of TechCrunch, though, has been actually meeting people in person. I’ve had the opportunity to meet people who share my passion for startups in Israel, London, Seattle, and at many parties (here, here, here, here, here) here at my house in Silicon Valley.
Thanks to everyone who emailed me today to say “Happy Birthday”. And thank you to Brian Oberkirch for writing on his blog.
A lot’s changed in the last twelve months. I can only imagine what the next twelve will bring.