Archive for: techcrunch

New York Times Report That Online Advertising Brings in Nearly a Quarter Of Their Revenues

NYTlogoOver at Techcrunch they reported yesterday that the New York Times are now receiving nearly a quarter of their total revenues from online advertising.

The New York Times announced third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million.

Last quarter, advertising revenues declined an even steeper 32 percent, and online advertising was down 15.5 percent. So maybe this is the first step on its way back to positive territory. Here are the year-over-year declines in online advertising revenues for each of the past four quarters.

Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues

4Q08: -3.5%
1Q09: -6.1%
2Q09: -15.5%
3Q09: -8.2%

Another interesting data point is that because its print advertising revenues are shrinking at a faster rate than its Internet advertising revenues, the Internet portion is actually a bigger percentage (23.5%) of the New York Times’ total advertising revenues than it was year ago (when it was 18.6%).

I have been a firm believer that print business will slowly leave only the major players in each market and all the smaller business will have to move online or close. However, with these latest figures I now think even the major players could be in big trouble!

Has Rivals Techcrunch and Silicon Alley Insider Partnered??

I noticed this morning that in the Silicon Alley Insider RSS feed that they were not just promoting Techcrunch content, but linking directly to their articles!

silicon alley insider linking to techcrunch

Have these two key rival in the technology news space partnered to try to catch up to Mashable in terms of traffic numbers?

Funny Techcrunch Comment

Im not really too sure why Im writing about this on Crenk, apart from the fact that it was on a technology news site. This morning I posted a comment on a Techcrunch article about YouTube Founder Chad Hurley funding the USA Formula 1 team, and I was the first person to comment and thought it was funny to see the comments to follow. Here is a quick look. It just made me laugh.

techcrunch comments

Invesp: Comprehensive Blog Directory

There are so many different types of blog directories out in the market at the moment. Today we received an email from Invesp who have created their own blog directory and it seems to be more comprehensive than most others. Additionally it is great to see Crenk already in the directory and doing well. In the term “startups” we are already in the top 10 blogs, with many other top sites including Techcrunch, Venturebeat, TheNextWeb and Killerstartups.

I know that most of these directories aren’t really comprehensive and they don’t tend to include all blogs in the right areas, but who really cares, it is just a bit of fun.

startup index

Techcrunch and Mashable Partner with Tweetdeck

A couple of days ago Techcrunch was the first to partner with Tweetdeck (the Adobe Air Twitter application) and launch their own version of the very popular twitter application. However, now they arent the only ones to do so in the technolgy news space, Mashable has entered into a new Tweetdeck partnership.

Techcrunch Tweetdeck

techcrunch tweetdeck

Mashable Tweetdeck

mashable tweetdeck

So which technology based Tweetdeck will you be using? More importantly im wondering why we dont have a Crenk tweetdeck version available yet! Well maybe one day.

Crunchpad Prototype from Techcrunch

Over at Techcrunch they have released the new prototype images of their Crunchpad. So what do you think?

Techcrunch Tablet Leaks. Whats Your Thoughts?

tech-crunchtablet-1

Last week Techcrunch reported about how images of their new Tablet had leaked. This makes a big difference because it is normally Techcrunch who is the first to report on a leak. However in this case the team over at Techcrunch have been working on a new Tablet in which in essence is a giant iPhone.

The Tablet has been in development for the last six months or so, and it has really changed dramatically in design since the first prototype. This Tablet moves Techcrunch a little away from just being a technology blog and more towards a tech company with two arms, journalism and actual technology.

Microsoft Songsmith Provides Musical Mockeries!

In the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, both the commerical for Microsoft Songsmith and the number of parody tunes that have been released “hurt so good.”

The Songsmith commercial caused a ripple of laughter when the painful commercial made its rounds on the internet. Viewers lamented on the lack of acting as well as the blatent use of an Apple laptop throughout the entire promotion. You can vew the entire promotion here.

Recently, several Songsmith parodies of popular songs have been released using the Songsmith application.Both TechCrunch and This Week in Tech (TWiT) covered these interesting adaptions that almost appear to come from a bizarro world.

Here is “Roxanne” by The Police via Songsmith.

If you’d like to see other tunes mutilated by this Microsoft inception, visit the the article posted over on TechCrunch. Prepare to laugh, cry, or a mixture of both!

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Techcrunch Changes Its Theme Again!! Oh Come On

Techcrunch has changed their theme yet again. A few months ago the theme was changed for the 3rd time in a year and I thought it was really moving in the right direction. The navigation was clean, there were a lot more options to find the articles you are looking for, and the theme had some colour and character.

Techcrunch today have launched a new theme which keeps the same navigation principles but totally gets rid of all the character and colour on the page.

Let me know what you think!

Before:

techcrunch

After:

newtechcrunch

Lycos To Not Shut Down Mail and Tripod Services in USA

It was reported yesterday that Lycos will not be shutting down their Mail and Tripod services as reported by Techcrunch and others.

In an article appearing this morning, TechCrunch erroneously reported that Lycos will be closing its Tripod and Lycos Mail services on Feb. 15.  The information contained in the blog posting pertains to Lycos Europe products and services and affects Lycos Europe users only.

The closing of these two products by Lycos Europe does not impact Lycos users in the U.S.  Lycos, Inc. and Lycos Europe are two completely separate entities and business units.  Lycos, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daum Communications, Corp., while Lycos Europe is owned by Telefonica.  Late last year, Lycos Europe’s parent company announced it would be shutting down its operations and seeking a sale of its remaining assetts.

Lycos Inc. (www.lycos.com) continues to operate social media, publishing and search services including both Tripod and Lycos Mail. Currently, Tripod is the #17 social networking site worldwide (comScore MM Dec. 2008), with millions of member pages hosted, published and visited each month.

Techcrunch Theme Changed Again, This Time It Is Actually User Friendly

I have also noticed today that Techcrunch has changed their theme again. It hasn’t really been too long since they last changed their theme, probably about a quarter off the top of my head. Last time the Techcrunch theme was changed they seems to have nothing in their sidebar except advertising (i know Crenk also has a little bit of advertising), however that being said this new theme really addresses the key issues of the older theme.

The site itself is a lot more compact in the header and key change is that the 728×90 advertisement is no longer above the site, but fitting in with the header itself. The key green is not really as predominant, but it makes it easy to distinguish between Techcrunch and the other network sites. In the old theme they just had excepts on the home page, but now they have an additional three slots in which they can feature certain articles. Navigation has really improved within this new theme and now it is a lot easier to find new content. As well as feature articles in the header on the home page they have also added eleven featured articles in the sidebar sitewide. If I didnt have an RSS reader or use it everyday, with the previous theme it would have been impossible to keep up with the new content, however with this new theme it provides me with a better idea on what is happening in the tech space.

This new theme is far from perfect but it is a huge improvement from all the previous themes they had on the site. I would really still like to see a lot more integration between the Techcrunch home page and the other network sites, but im sure that will come within the year.

Book Worms Unite with BookSprouts

Never before have we as a global community ever felt so connected as we have in the past ten years. We have grown from gatherings, town hall meetings, forums and message boards, internet chat rooms, to social networks. I host a podcast over at Tech in Twenty, and we’ve discussed the growth in popularity for social networks and how niche interests have played a huge part of that growth.

We have all heard of the popular social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc. But there are a lot of networks out there that cater to a more specific market, no matter if you’re into music, television, knitting, dating, marbles, or candles, there is a group for you. BookSprouts is the newly developed social site for book clubs. The site is a amongst a few competitors that claim to be a space for readers, but BookSprout is different in that the actual design is easy to navigate at the layout is welcoming to new users with little confusion. Every step for you is laid out so that users can get started immediately without getting lost in the site.

booksproutshomepage
I had time to explore the site and came across the same problem the write of the TechCrunch article did. Only two of the books I listed had actual groups connected to them. This was rather limiting since those books were not considered favorites of mine, so it left me little desire to join that discussion. While I won’t blame this entirely on BookSprout, this is a user generated community, unless someone starts a group for the book, I have little time to manage one on my own.

I like how the site is free of ads. Though one might question the ability of the site to sustain itself, other social sites like Ning are free of advertisements and function perfectly well without all the advertising. The ability to purchase what other users are reading straight from the site is nice with an easily accessible Amazon link, but might be too limiting considering that there might be other places offering the book cheaper. For that you might want to check out my post on Booksprice.

Here is a video that details what Booksprice offers and what they’ve done for their users. Pick a couple of books, sign-up, and enjoy!

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