Ajax Girl

Today we are announcing that we have acquired Philip “Pud” Kaplan’s FuckedCompany.com in a stock for assets transaction. The basic details of the transaction are included in a press release that will go out shortly, and Pud has mentioned this on his personal blog. We weren’t going to announce this for another week or so (even though I hinted at it on CrunchNotes), but too many people know about it already and news of it was starting to leak (see Wired and CNET as well). I don’t want to be in a position again where other sites are breaking our news, so we’re announcing officially this weekend.

We’ve been working on this deal for months, it is good that we are finally able to close and announce it.

FuckedCompany first went live in 2000, chronicling failing and troubled companies in its unique and abrasive style after the dot com bust. Within a year it had a massive audience and was getting serious mainstream press attention. As the startup economy became better in 2004, much of the attention the site received went away. But a large and loyal audience remains at the site, coming back day after day for its unique slant on the news. At its peak, FC had 4 million unique monthly visitors.

Since FC focuses on the negative news coming out of startups, and TechCrunch tends to focus on the positive, this combination may seem odd. But the sites are in fact extremely complimentary. For example, the audiences are about equal in size and have very little overlap. So from day one we will double our reach and traffic.

Reasons For The Merger

The market moves in cycles, and its clear that we are at the tail end of the current boom (despite recent statements I’ve made to the contrary). Thousands of startups launched in the last year and a half, and well over a billion dollars was invested in them. Even in good times, 90% of startups fail. But recent events make me believe that even a 10% success rate might be optimistic going forward. Some recent trends that alarmed us:

• Smart people are saying the end of the current boom is near, and these guys are rarely wrong in their predictions. See, for example, Peter Rip’s recent post “Web 2.0 - Over and Out.” Peter really nailed the analysis in that post - and it’s hard to argue with any of his conclusions.
• The TechCrunch DeadPool, where we track failed startups, is growing exponentially. If the failure rate of startups continues to grow this fast, we will be at a point where failures will begin to outnumber new funded startups. Since 9/10 startups fail, by focusing on the negative we will have much more content for the site.
• While plenty of startups are launching, we aren’t seeing nearly as much innovation or the “wow” factor like we did in 2004/2005. That does not bode well for the future.
• We’ve noticed a significantly higher number of negative comments on TechCrunch relative to past periods. Our readers are unhappy; they want a change in editorial tone.

Also, the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then ultimately cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well.

What To Expect

Integration will occur slowly. The FuckedCompany site has a notice on it about the announcement and will soon be upgraded to more of a TechCrunch look and feel (white background instead of the previous black and red, and a new logo that matches our font and style. For now, though, we are keeping the sites separate and each will continue to operate normally. Deeper integration will occur over time.

Many of our readers still enjoy reading about new startups, and we won’t stop covering them. But we will likely move new startup coverage, which will be a secondary consideration going forward, to a new blog over time. TechCrunch and FuckedCompany will begin to mirror each other’s content, and at the appropriate time the brands and sites will be merged.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

It’s important that we continue to tweak our business model to ensure that we stay relevant and publish compelling content going forward. That’s the main reason this transaction occurred - we are seeing the end of an era and are acting on what we are seeing.

I know our reasoning won’t satisfy every one of our readers, and I understand that this is a lot of change coming very quickly. I want your feedback to ensure that the merger is done tastefully and properly. Leave your comments below, or send me a private email (my email address is on the About page). I definitely want to hear your opinions.

When TechCrunch first launched in June 2005, there were no blogs dedicated to covering new startups. Today, nearly two years later, there are dozens of excellent blogs doing this, and mainstream media is paying attention as well. Entrepreneurs with new ideas will always have a way to reach potential users and customers. They just won’t be able to do it here any more.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105646005/

Today we are announcing that we have acquired Philip “Pud” Kaplan’s FuckedCompany.com in a stock for assets transaction. The basic details of the transaction are included in a press release that will go out shortly, and Pud has mentioned this on his personal blog. We weren’t going to announce this for another week or so (even though I hinted at it on CrunchNotes), but too many people know about it already and news of it was starting to leak (see Wired and CNET as well). I don’t want to be in a position again where other sites are breaking our news, so we’re announcing officially this weekend.

We’ve been working on this deal for months, it is good that we are finally able to close and announce it.

FuckedCompany first went live in 2000, chronicling failing and troubled companies in its unique and abrasive style after the dot com bust. Within a year it had a massive audience and was getting serious mainstream press attention. As the startup economy became better in 2004, much of the attention the site received went away. But a large and loyal audience remains at the site, coming back day after day for its unique slant on the news. At its peak, FC had 4 million unique monthly visitors.

Since FC focuses on the negative news coming out of startups, and TechCrunch tends to focus on the positive, this combination may seem odd. But the sites are in fact extremely complimentary. For example, the audiences are about equal in size and have very little overlap. So from day one we will double our reach and traffic.

Reasons For The Merger

The market moves in cycles, and its clear that we are at the tail end of the current boom (despite recent statements I’ve made to the contrary). Thousands of startups launched in the last year and a half, and well over a billion dollars was invested in them. Even in good times, 90% of startups fail. But recent events make me believe that even a 10% success rate might be optimistic going forward. Some recent trends that alarmed us:

• Smart people are saying the end of the current boom is near, and these guys are rarely wrong in their predictions. See, for example, Peter Rip’s recent post “Web 2.0 - Over and Out.” Peter really nailed the analysis in that post - and it’s hard to argue with any of his conclusions.
• The TechCrunch DeadPool, where we track failed startups, is growing exponentially. If the failure rate of startups continues to grow this fast, we will be at a point where failures will begin to outnumber new funded startups. Since 9/10 startups fail, by focusing on the negative we will have much more content for the site.
• While plenty of startups are launching, we aren’t seeing nearly as much innovation or the “wow” factor like we did in 2004/2005. That does not bode well for the future.
• We’ve noticed a significantly higher number of negative comments on TechCrunch relative to past periods. Our readers are unhappy; they want a change in editorial tone.

Also, the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then ultimately cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well.

What To Expect

Integration will occur slowly. The FuckedCompany site has a notice on it about the announcement and will soon be upgraded to more of a TechCrunch look and feel (white background instead of the previous black and red, and a new logo that matches our font and style. For now, though, we are keeping the sites separate and each will continue to operate normally. Deeper integration will occur over time.

Many of our readers still enjoy reading about new startups, and we won’t stop covering them. But we will likely move new startup coverage, which will be a secondary consideration going forward, to a new blog over time. TechCrunch and FuckedCompany will begin to mirror each other’s content, and at the appropriate time the brands and sites will be merged.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

It’s important that we continue to tweak our business model to ensure that we stay relevant and publish compelling content going forward. That’s the main reason this transaction occurred - we are seeing the end of an era and are acting on what we are seeing.

I know our reasoning won’t satisfy every one of our readers, and I understand that this is a lot of change coming very quickly. I want your feedback to ensure that the merger is done tastefully and properly. Leave your comments below, or send me a private email (my email address is on the About page). I definitely want to hear your opinions.

When TechCrunch first launched in June 2005, there were no blogs dedicated to covering new startups. Today, nearly two years later, there are dozens of excellent blogs doing this, and mainstream media is paying attention as well. Entrepreneurs with new ideas will always have a way to reach potential users and customers. They just won’t be able to do it here any more.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105646005/

Magnify.net is a new video startup that is different from the rest of the crowd. Unlike YouTube and dozens of others, it isn’t focused on building a portal around user-uploaded videos. Instead, they are allowing website publishers to create their own video channels, and populate it with videos from other sites (like YouTube, Revver, Yahoo Videos, etc.) that allow embedding.

The result is a highly targeted niche video site that integrates very well into existing content websites. To see it in action, see this channel that they created for TechCrunch. There are a ton of publisher settings to allow customization, but the general idea is that we would add this to the site, and allow readers to add their own videos that they think will be interesting to this audience.

I’ve set the TechCrunch page up so that any reader can add video (direct from their computer, via a search feature or by pasting the actual video URL from a video site), and it will go into the collection after at least three others have reviewed it and it has at least a 5/10 rating on average (or an admin approves it). Videos that are approved can be rated, commented, tagged, shared, etc. Magnify.net also offers a RSS feed of all videos on the site, so readers can subscribe and stay up to speed on new videos.

Here’s an example of deeper integration with TechCrunch: One of our recent posts showed a Joost commercial. This video has also been added to the video site where others can interact with it as well.

This is actually perfect for the new CenterNetworks experiment where Allen Stern is calling for companies to send in demo videos of their products. They should set up a Magnify.net channel to organize these - the ratings feature is already built in. I’d like to get these videos onto TechCrunch as well, and readers can simply add them.

I’ve also been adding startup demos from ScobleShow. If startups have demo videos that they’d like to have this audience see, this would be a good place to add it.

There are other features as well that I haven’t mentioned (playlists, widgets, etc). The site is still very much in beta and needs some work on flow and the user interface (some features are hard to find). I’ve also noticed it runs very slow.

Magnify.net was founded by Steve Rosenbaum and Simon Cavalletto, and Scott Milener (previously Browster) is also involved. They have raised $1.2 million in seed financing from New York Angels and NextStage Capital. 3,500 channels have been created to date.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105563205/

Whos.Amung.us is a neat widget we came across tonight that some websites will want to add. It shows the number of concurrent users on a site at any given time.

Clicking on the widget also gives good stats on the recent URLs people visited as well as popular pages. Like Sitemeter (which we also have in the bottom right of the sidebar), it doesn’t do anything Google Analytics or other stats services don’t do - but it is an easy way to share more data about your site with your readers.

There is also a firefox extension that shows the total number of readers on your site at the bottom of the browser at all times.

We’ll keep it on TechCrunch until it manages to take the site down for the first time (every widget we add seems to do this eventually).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/105547869/