Crenk

Where do you head to find technology company information? Currently, there are a lot of technology blogs that provide company directories, but I think there are two key players that stand out in this sector and I’m sure their pageviews will sore in the coming months and years. Those two players have to be Crunchbase and Tradevibes.

Crunchbase is the company directory from the superblog Techcrunch. Crunchbase is build on a wiki type system and instead of just writing about companies and collect data, Michael Arrington thought it would be a good idea to actually put it all together and make some more money from it. Crunchbase has a great look about it and it brings together information from some of the most well-known companies. On Crunchbase you can find descriptions of the company, funding information, location and telephone numbers, competitors and staffing information. I would like Crunchbase to find new ways to make money apart from advertising, like a highlighted company feature.

Tradevibes has a bit of a different layout, but essentially it is the same concept with the type of wiki development. Tradevibes provide a similar set of information as Crunchbase but it also has additional features, such as a fantasy exchange game, voting system on companies, and forums. The design on Tradevibes is actually a bit cluttered and there seems to be a lot of products that have simply just been put together to add features, instead of developing something in house that matches the site. For example, the job board in the left column from SimplyHired.

Both of these companies are leading the way in this niche, however there still seems to be a lot of issues in terms of design and integrating information that is actually needed, without information overload. It would also be nice to see integration with several technology blogs to provide news about each of the companies in the database, but so far even this seems to be limited.

TechCrunch has been a well known site for everything tech and media related. With millions of readers and followers, TechCrunch has done an amazing job in helping young fledgling startups get noticed. What began as TechCrunch 20, then 40, and now 50, it looks to once again be the opportunity that every startup is waiting for.

In just under a week the San Francisco Design Center Concourse will be transformed into a showcase floor for entrepreneurs, new technology, and VC’s looking for the “next big thing.” The DemoPit, where all the magic happens. Paired with this display are panels of speakers who will share their thoughts and expertise with the attendees, expected to be over 900 this year alone.

The event gives the startups an opportunity to share, explain, and possibly have their ideas funded. Companies have a high chance of being launched at this event, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks to all the sponsors who help support and foster an event where these startups can find growth and a possible future!

Keep track of this event, and check back here for some of the highlights of the event.

I have noticed while surfing Techcrunch that they have added a new feature today, that they plan to announce tomorrow. The feature in question is Seesmic, and at the bottom of every post now on Techcrunch users have the option to add a video comment. This inclusion was really only a matter of time, due to the fact that Mike Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, so any publicity is obviously good publicity.

This comes a month after Mashable had added a similar option to their site, but partnered with Viddler to do so. On Mashable however they dont have too many comments on posts to start with and also as far as I can see the Viddler partnership has added absolutely nothing to the site or user experience. Thus, im curious to see if the Seesmic option on Techcrunch actually gets used.

Update: Mike reported about adding video comments, but didnt even link back to my article that was published first. How rude! haha.

The Crunchies happened last night and here are the winners. All this information has been pulled straight from Techcrunch, so make sure you head over there to see some of the after party, etc.

The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results. For a full list of nominees, visit the Crunchies 2007 portal here.

I tried to embed the show from Kyte.tv, but when this happened it would only show the most recent video on the Scoble Channel. How annoying! Anyways, here is the link to Arrington on the Kindle and it is weird to see Arrington with a sense of humour! haha.

It is getting towards the end of 2007 and the website awards seem to be coming out of the wood work, but really are any of them worth winning?

Awards:

• CNet Blog 100
• Mashable Awards
• The Crunchies (wow, cant take this one seriously!)
• Weblog Awards
• Bloggies
• And so on….

It seems like the list of useless blog awards never stops. What do you actually receive from winning one of these awards? Additionally, have you noticed that it is mostly the same websites winning or nominated for all the awards! This all seems to be because of traffic numbers which will push everything. Hence winning awards like these dont push traffic to your site, but the opposite you need the traffic to push the awards.

I have come across a very interesting article on Facebook Apps Monetization. It is from a panel at the Graphing Social Patterns and the panel includes, Michael Arrington (Techcrunch), Jason Calacanis (Netscape, Mahalo, Weblogs Inc) and Robert Scoble (Podtech).

A little off topic, Robert Scoble has posted a link to a very interesting analysis of Techcrunch’s linking history. 1/3 of Techcrunch links are to another Techcrunch site. Hmmm.

I have been reading Techcrunch today and Duncan Riley talks about Scoble and some comments he made about the new Techmeme Leaderboard. Scoble said that the leaderboard would the death of blogging. Duncan has tried to comment by arguing the point that most of the leaderboard are actual blogs, well 64% in his words. All this is pretty much irrelevant on what percentage are actual blogs or not, because is it still classified as a blog if there are more than one author?

Overall I just think the list is pointless and it just boosts the ego of the few that are on it! It has the same relevance as most of the lists you see around the place about the “top 50 bloggers” or “top blog awards”. Pointless!

Im sorry I havent been posting a lot in the last few days, but been very busy on a few projects that will be launching soon. However this said, I have just been reading a few RSS feeds from a variety of sites and I see that Techmeme has launched a new “leaderboard“. The Techmeme leaderboard shows that frequency of blogs providing main topics on the Techmeme site. I must agree with Jason on this one! Who really cares!

I was an avid reader of Techmeme but in the last few months I have very much lost interest in the site and the service it is providing. As Jason mentions the majority of the links on the site is just from sites that re-post the news and dont actually give their overall perceptions on the news. It is no longer about peoples opinions, just about reproduction and increase reader numbers!

I am trying to move Crenk away from just basic news and stories of the day, and actually providing my views on why sites will or wont work and also help web developers, owners and investors where every possible. I have written articles not to get on Techmeme and get more exposure, but i have never understood why i can get links from sites on Techmeme and never actually show my news on or link to my site from there.

Latest news around the blog-o-shere is that Yahoo Podcast is no longer. It has already been reported by RWW, Techcrunch and CenterNetworks.

Yahoo Podcast is a basic podcasting search, directory and listening service, which launched back in October 2005.

Marshall over at RWW notes, “Some would argue that podcasting hasn’t caught on like it was expected to, that it’s been dominated by existing media giants and beaten as a medium by the rise of video. I still love me a good episode from ITConversations, Briefings Direct or our own new show Read/WriteTalk when I’m walking the dog - but Yahoo! users looking for podcasts will soon have to look elsewhere.”

As mentioned by Techcrunch there are a few other podcast directories struggling at present. For example Odeo, which was acquired from investors, then sold, then acquired another directory called FireAnt.

However, the quote of the day for Yahoo is from Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks when he stated that he didnt argee with Marshall (RWW) and the real reason the Yahoo Podcasts are close is that the “The Damn Thing Never Worked!“