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

Steven Finch — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:37:47 +0000

Over 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??

Steven Finch — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:03:55 +0000

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!

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

Steven Finch — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:51:56 +0000

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.

Invesp: Comprehensive Blog Directory

Steven Finch — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:48:56 +0000

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.

Techcrunch and Mashable Partner with Tweetdeck

Steven Finch — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:59:21 +0000

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

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

Steven Finch — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:26:28 +0000

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

Techcrunch Tablet Leaks. Whats Your Thoughts?

Steven Finch — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:19:05 +0000

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!

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:10:50 +0000

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!

Techcrunch Changes Its Theme Again!! Oh Come On

Steven Finch — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:26:33 +0000

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:

After:

Lycos To Not Shut Down Mail and Tripod Services in USA

Steven Finch — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:51:45 +0000

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

Steven Finch — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:39:22 +0000

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

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:17:21 +0000

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.

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!

Zemanta Launches Public API

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:13:12 +0000

Zemanta has long been a favorite addition to my blogging processes. This interesting little addition to the browser builds in the ability include photos, links, and tags for all of your media inserts. By installing Zemanta, I have reduced the time it takes to track down information to include, and by setting up some personal settings I’m sure to find what I need when I need it.

The New

Zemanta has always offered what it thinks you will need in terms of photos and links, but today Zemanta is launching their public API which will now allow users to build a “user suggestion engine.”

Funding for the company has come from Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group, along with its win at the fist SeedCamp, this announcement has come out of LeWeb in Paris, France. This announcement is sure to increase not only the number of users, but also the dependency that online writers will have on this dynamic tool.

The Future

Zemanta has now opened itself to a huge reception in the world of online content creators. By opening their API, they can approach content creators to leverage their unorganized with the system, and the users are able to access the content for various needs.

In an article by TechCrunch, they state that “usage of the API is free for up to 10.000 API calls per month, and for a subscription fee above that.” So not only has Zemanta found a way to integrate user input, but they also find a way to monetize their efforts for content creators to get organized.

Zemanta has a bright future ahead of it. I have just recently connected with one of the Founders for Zemanta on Twitter @andraz. He’s easily approachable and seems to be keen on connecting with users around the world.

“Danger Will Robinson…Danger”

Luis Sandoval — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:18:45 +0000

For those of you not following TechCrunch’s Layoff Tracker, the tech industry is taking a major hit. So far a total of 44,283 (to include HP’s release) people are gone from their respective companies. Is this another Dot Com Bust?

How bad is this? Well, pretty bad considering that most tech startups are staffed minimally to keep costs down. Some companies have been forced to cut as many has 1/3 of their staff, some up to 50%.

I were Chicken Little, the sky would definitely be falling right now!

TechCrunch Creates Layoff Tracker

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:37:44 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Here on Crenk there’s already been at least two posts on how the social media world has been hit by the economic downturn, here and here. Just about every industry has been effected, and as such we’ve seen companies begin to layoff whole portions of their employed team. If employees were not let go, there were changes in management, as seen in Twitter’s case.

That being said, TechCrunch has created a Layoff Tracker for all the layoffs that have and will be occuring in the coming months ahead. Already last week alone we saw companies like Zillow, Pandora, Adbrite, Hi5, etc, all get listed as companies doing some trimming to their employed staff.

Keep up with the latest as it happens and see if your favorite company gets listed.

TechCrunch Hits 1 Million Milestone

Luis Sandoval — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:56:17 +0000

TechCrunch is a self proclaimed “obsessive” site for everything technology, especially start-ups. Michael Arrington, co-founder of TechCrunch, has a well established career in doing what he loves best and, in my opinion, being damn good at it. But don’t take my word for, they have just recently hit a huge milestone for any site, over 1 million subscribers follow them via RSS Feeds. In less than 39 months they have achieved this goal and by the looks of it, will continue this trend.

Arrington reports that like any other site, their numbers fluctuate. Weekends are slow, but mid-week is their best time period. Still, even with the fluctuations, fans stay for the news and are even offered various ways to stay in touch with what is happening in the world of technology; Twitter, RSS Feed, FriendFeed, are just as few examples of how TechCrunch stays in touch with their readers.

Recentlly TechCrunch held their TechCrunch50 event which has been covered on Crenk here and here. Because of Arrington’s love for start-ups, he offers some of the best in the world a stage for them to highlight their products, network with VC’s and other interested high profile people, and in turn gives a little back with the success he’s achieved.

I highly recommend businesses to take a look at TechCrunch because as investors, you could be a part of the next big thing in the tech world!

Yammer is Top Prize Winner at TechCrunch50

Luis Sandoval — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:59:50 +0000

After three days of presenters and presentations, the dust has settled and cleared. Yammer was announced the winner of this years TechCrunch50, so a big congrats to them.

Yammer is a Twitter based internal corporate communications tool for businesses. They provide a great model for companies to use Twitter inside their company in a closed and private way where employees can sign up and communicate with their co-workers across the company’s network. This is an excellent idea and looks to unite people across different departments without having to pick up a phone or physically walk to them.

The catch to their monetization process is this, if the company itself wants full control of the chatter and its employees, that’s when the model turns profitable and businesses pay into the service. TechCrunch’s article states “There is such a huge demand for this type of service that 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service the first day it launched on Monday.”

Pretty amazing numbers that only look to go up in the coming months as internal corporate communication tools will be a necessity for day to day operations. If you’re in a business looking to building community amongst your employees, definitely check out Yammer.

Where Can I Find Tech Company and Product Info? Crunchbase or Tradevibes!

Steven Finch — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:17:53 +0000

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.

TechCrunch50 Showcases Startups

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:39:45 +0000

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.

Techcrunch Add Seesmic Option To Their Comments

Steven Finch — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:44:22 +0000

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.

Crunchies 2007 Have No Been and Gone

Steven Finch — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:22:19 +0000

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.

Without further ado, the winners of this yearâ€™s Crunchies awards are:

Best technology innovation/achievement: Earthmine
Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme
Best new gadget/device: iPhone
Best business model: Zazzle
Best design: SmugMug
Best enterprise startup: Zoho
Best consumer startup: Meebo
Best mobile startup: Twitter
Best international startup: Netvibes
Best user-generated content: Digg
Best video site: Hulu
Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon
Best clean tech startup: Tesla Motors
Best time sink site: Kongregate
Most likely to make the world a better place: DonorsChoose
Most likely to succeed: WordPress
Best startup founder: Mark Zuckerberg
Best startup CEO: Toni Schneider
Best new startup of 2007: iMedix
Best overall: Facebook

Kindle Gets Crunched

Steven Finch — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:47:30 +0000

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.

Website Awards Waste Of Space

Steven Finch — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:13:05 +0000

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.

Very Interesting Links: Panel Discussion at Graphing Social Patterns and Techcrunch Linking History

Steven Finch — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:04:37 +0000

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.

More Crap About Techmeme!

Steven Finch — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:22:20 +0000

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!