So, what do you think of our redesign so far? Wait, don’t answer that. You already have — thousands of times. The most common refrain seems to be, “love the new site, hate the logo”. But my favorite offshoot of that is the notion that our new logo looks like Tetris. I assume this is meant to be an insult, but I mean, who doesn’t love Tetris?
Anyway, one driven reader decided to take things to the next logical conclusion: he created a version of Tetris using the TechCrunch “T” and the TechCrunch “C”. TCTetris. It’s pure gold. → Read More
It’s been months in the making. It’s taken innumerable twists and turns along the way. It’s survived an acquisition. It’s been a challenge and a privilege to coordinate. It’s my incredible pleasure to present the all-new, completely redesigned TechCrunch. With special thanks to our launch sponsor, Dell.
I’ve been acting as product manager for the TechCrunch redesign since the beginning of 2011. The project began last fall before AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch. By December it needed product management, so Michael Arrington asked AOL’s Brad Garlinghouse for a product manager & project lead. He turned to AOL’s head of Consumer Experience, Matte Scheinker (my manager).
TechCrunch is bold. It’s raw. It’s fast-paced. With 50 articles crossing the home page daily we couldn’t simply redesign the reader-facing site; we had to think about the CMS too. We wanted to support you, the readers, because you read every article we post. We went through more rounds of wireframes and logos than I can remember. After our eighth rejected visual design I locked myself in a room with Code & Theory’s creative director and we tweaked, discussed and revised until we had something we both liked, a precursor to what you see here today. → Read More
By now you’ve probably seen Mike’s post about the redesign coming next week and I wanted to talk a bit about where things are headed. CrunchGear, in short, is being subsumed into TechCrunch/Gadgets, a plan that has been long percolating at the HQ and something we, in a way, welcome. I started CrunchGear on August 10, 2006. Mike Arrington called me after I left Gizmodo and asked me to start a gadget blog. I did. It’s been nearly five years now and in that time we’ve posted 47,243 stories, run through dozens of writers, and amused a few million of you guys on a daily basis. So things will change slightly, but the same CrunchGear wit, wisdom, and opinion will be in full effect over at our new home. → Read More
We only have a couple more weeks left until our 6th annual summer party at August Capital. Our first two batches of 100 tickets sold out in under an hour. Today we are releasing 100 more. The party will follow our Mobile First CrunchUp on July 29th and will be held in Menlo Park from 5:30 – 10:00pm. There will be a mix of startup demos, drinks, giveaways, networking and fun on one of the prettiest roads in Silicon Valley. The tickets tend to sell out very fast, so be sure to act quickly if you would like to come. If you’re not able to get a ticket today, stay tuned for a ticket giveaway this weekend. We will also release our next set of tickets next week.
Tickets are now on sale here. → Read More
If I asked you which of the major social sites you thought sent us the most traffic, you might think it was Twitter. After all, the TechCrunch Twitter account has over 1.7 million followers. When you compare this to the (just under) 250,000 fans our Facebook TechCrunch page has, it should be no contest, right? Wrong.
The truth is that if this were October of last year, you would have been right in thinking that Twitter was our top referrer in terms of social websites. But since that time, Facebook has far surpassed Twitter in terms of traffic coming our way each month. In fact, Facebook.com is now sends nearly double the traffic that Twitter.com does. This is probably due to the fact that last November, we added Elin, our excellent community manager, who curates and engages with people from our feed on Facebook. I also suspect it has to do with the rise of the Like button. Ever since it was released last year, Facebook has been steadily referring more readers our way.
But this info, while interesting, isn’t all that surprising. After all, Facebook is by far the largest social network in the world. With over 750 million active users, it still dwarfs Twitter. The really surprising thing is that Twitter isn’t even our number two social referrer in terms of websites anymore. As of this month, that distinction goes to LinkedIn. And it’s not even close. → Read More
Summer is here and our 6th annual August Capital Party is just around the corner. Last week we released 100 tickets, all of which sold out in under an hour. Today we are releasing our next set of 100 tickets. The August Capital Party will be held on the gorgeous Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park on July 29th from 5:30 – 10:00pm, preceding our Mobile First CrunchUp. This party is a great way to see an amazing mix of startup demos, network, enter into giveaways, have some drinks and some fun in the sun. Tickets are $40 and tend to sell out very quickly. If you would like to come, please act fast. If you aren’t able to purchase tickets today, stay tuned – we will have a ticket giveaway this Friday and will release more tickets next week.
Tickets are on sale here. → Read More
Now that we’ve finally caught our breath from Disrupt in New York City, it’s time to to bring Disrupt back home to San Francisco. (We like to keep things moving around here). To get things rolling, we are accepting applications for startups to launch at the Disrupt Startup Battlefield in San Francisco, September 12-14, 2011. So what are you waiting for? Applications for the Startup Battlefield can be submitted starting today.
Do you think your startup can be the next Getaround, Qwiki, or Soluto—and make it through the judges gauntlet to claim the top prize of $50,000, the “Disrupt Cup” and accolades of the crowd? Sure it can. But you’ll never know unless you apply. → Read More
Three years ago, I got a phone call — Pandora was about to die.
Things were not going well for the Internet radio service at that point. The economy was collapsing, Sequoia would soon give its infamous “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and most importantly for Pandora, it was starting to look like the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) may not lower their rates. This led founder Tim Westergren to suggest that they may have to shut the service down. And we wrote that sadly, it was looking like Pandora may have to be a “sacrificial lamb“.
That’s what makes today so fascinating — and perhaps the feel-good tech story for this generation of web startups. Pandora IPO’d this morning, listing itself on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “P”. While the orignal IPO share price had been set at $7 to $9, the company revised that to $10 to $12, and then set it yesterday at $16. The stock opened today north of $20 a share, where it remains. The market cap is now over $3 billion. Again, this was a company that was going to die. → Read More
Editor’s note: We often hear the complaint that “TechCrunch doesn’t cover startups anymore.” Yet we feel like we are covering them more than ever. In this guest post, Mark Goldenson breaks down exactly how much TechCrunch covers startups. The results may surprise you (while we haven’t independently checked the numbers ourselves, they look about right). After reading his analysis, let us know in comments what you think is the right mix of startup versus big tech company coverage.
Recently I went through a Valley ritual: pitching a story to TechCrunch (not this one). We liked our chances: we were announcing funding, contracts, and growing metrics. It was our first TechCrunch pitch.
Like most press pitches, it went into the ether. We understood; journalists are swamped and cutting through the noise is hard. Yet I noticed that day out of TechCrunch’s forty stories, only two were about early-stage startups. The rest were on large or high-profile companies like Google, Twitter, and Foursquare.
It spiked a long-time concern: how much is TechCrunch still about startups? → Read More
TechCrunch turns 6 years old today. Back on June 11, 2005, Michael Arrington wrote his first blog post. Then he started having parties in the backyard of his old house in Atherton, one of the YouTube guys showed up to one of them, there were lots more parties, and the rest is history.
Michael’s come a long way from those backyard parties around a campfire, and so has TechCrunch. We now have millions of readers, dozens of employees, and our gatherings have gotten quite large (2,100 people at the last Disrupt in NYC). Oh, and we are now part of AOL. → Read More
You people confuse me.
Ten days ago we put Google’s +1 Button on TechCrunch — because why not? We try basically all these new buttons/counters/commenting systems much to the dismay of our precious page load speed (we know, we know, it sucks — fix coming). Some of these buttons are great and make a lot of sense. The Tweet Button, the Like Button, even Facebook’s new Send button. But I just don’t get the +1 Button. At all.
Well, let me rephrase that slightly. I understand the concept behind the +1 Button — it’s a smart one. You get people to click it and it improves the page’s search ranking for logged-in Google users with social connections (and eventually maybe all results). At least I think that’s how it works. But I have a hard time believing that all of you actually clicking on the button really get why you’re doing it. → Read More
A few days ago, Facebook held a tech talk at their headquarters. The topic of the talk was pushing changes — bug fixes, new features, product improvements, etc. Every day, Facebook engineers push hundreds of these; some big, some little. Most of the 600 million-plus users never notice a thing. And apparently, we’re even less likely to notice changes due to a special feature Facebook has. The “Everyone But TechCrunch Can See This” feature.
As Facebook engineer Chuck Rossi details around minute 23:00 in the video, Facebook has a tool they call “Gatekeeper” which allows them to be in control of who can see what code live on the service at any given time. As Rossi points out, right now on Facebook.com there is already the code for every major thing Facebook is going to launch in the next six months and beyond! It’s the Gatekeeper which stops us from seeing it. → Read More
As some of you may have read, I was all set to step on a plane on Sunday to head to New York City for TechCrunch Disrupt. Then a giant volcano exploded.
But being stranded in Iceland wasn’t all bad. First of all, it’s a beautiful country. Second, when some local entrepreneurs read about our misfortune, they got together and organized an event: TechCrunch Erupt. My friends and I headed over to the event on Monday for conversation, beer, and livestreaming of TechCrunch Disrupt from the U.S. → Read More
If you’re not at TechCrunch Disrupt, you’re missing out. I mean even MG flew in all the way from Iceland to finally get here. But incase you are stuck at ugh, work we’ve embedded the livestream above.
You can also follow along by tracking the #TCDisrupt hashtag on Twitter or you know, reading TechCrunch. So what are you waiting for, Disrupt! → Read More
While there’s no replacement for actually being at TechCrunch Disrupt, we realize that not everyone can make it for one reason or another (like me, for example, due to massive volcanic activity). As such, we’re happy to offer the next best thing: a full live stream of the event.
We’ve embedded the stream above, be sure to tune in at 9 AM ET. Additionally, you can also watch the videos we shoot for TechCrunchTV and ones tagged with the #tcdisrupt hashtag. We’ll be doing video interviews backstage with guests throughout the event so be sure to check back often. → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt kicks off in New York City in about 3 hours. So naturally I’m sitting in a bar in Iceland.
Why? Well, the entire story is kind of long and many parts are probably more appropriate for a Paul Carr book than this post. But the keyword is “Grimsvotn”.
Yes, it just so happens that a giant volcano under Vatnajokull (Iceland’s largest glacier) decided to give us the biggest eruption in over a century on Saturday. Obviously, this um, disrupted, my Sunday flight to New York City. So here I am. → Read More
Around 500 hackers participated from late last night to early today morning at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in New York, building in teams and waking up or popping enough Redbull this am in order to show off their hacks to notables including VC Jeff Clavier and Canv.as, VP of Product Bradley Horowitz and Canv.as founder Christopher Poole.
This year’s NYC Hackathon was our largest showing ever, and what the hack teams came up with are about to be judged, American Idol style, on stage with each team given 60 seconds to present. In case you taking part in this is no biggie, one of last year’s participants, GroupMe ended up received $10.6 million in funding. → Read More
As you’ve noticed by now, we’re about a week into our latest experiment in troll-slaying with Facebook Comments. So far, the reactions have been very mixed and very interesting. Publicly, many of the reactions were initially negative. But that has been shifting as time has gone on. Privately, most of the reactions have been positive. But not all of them. We appreciate the feedback.
More importantly, is the system actually working? Well, yes — the real question is: is it working too well? → Read More
Disruptions can happen to any industry anywhere in the world, which is why this year TechCrunch Disrupt is going global. The conference we launched last year in New York and San Francisco is coming back to both cities, but we are also adding a third Disrupt in Beijing. All three conferences will be filled with all-star speakers, the best new startups that launch on our stages, and the coup of working WiFi.
The first Disrupt will once again take place in New York City on May 23-25, preceded by our ever popular Hackathon on May 21-22 in which pizza-fueled developers gather to hack together a product in 24 hours. Anything can happen at these events. Last year, Charlie Rose kicked off the event by interviewing legendary VC John Doerr, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told Michael Arrington to “#@*k off,” and a real company emerged from the Hackathon—GroupMe, which later raised $10.6 million. During the main event, we launched two dozen startups, and the winner was an international startup, Soluto.
Today, we will begin taking submissions for Disrupt NY. If you are a founder building a company that is going to change the world, we want you to launch at Disrupt. Nowhere else offers the audience, investors, or media spotlight that Disrupt offers. Please submit your application HERE on our Disrupt application site powered by Producteev. We will be accepting submissions starting today and for the next eight weeks through Sunday, April 3, 2011 at midnight PT. We accept companies on a rolling basis, so please submit as soon as you’re ready for consideration. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
