Michael Arrington, World Domination of the Blogosphere
In a recent article published by Wired Magazine, Michael Arrington, the face behind the famous TechCrunch blog, has plans for world domination of the blogosphere, stating that “TechCrunch is only the beginning”. In the article, he is noted as being “The Loudest Voice in the Valley”, able to generate buzz among the web industry for start-ups he mentions daily on TechCrunch, which subsequently attracts venture capitalists of all sizes.
Michael Arrington plans to launch 20 sites by 2009, such as MusicCrunch, SoftwareCrunch, and NewsCrunch to mention just a few. All news oriented and geared towards becoming the premier tech sites online, and to directly compete with well established major tech sites like CNET, Wired, and CNN among many others. The objective is to hire well known bloggers within the industry and have them write articles for his blog empire to create a “solar system” of blogs, all revolving around each other.
Although the idea seems to be an amazing one for the web industry, it’s an idea which still needs to be further discussed before venturing into, solely due to the fact that it’s a completely different market that Michael Arrington would be diving into, nothing like where he is currently at with TechCrunch. The expansion would literally turn TechCrunch into somewhat of an online magazine, instead of a blog with a personal view on the subject of Web 2.o business start-ups, which is what he is famous for.
Observing how CNET, Wired, and CNN work and operate, they are quite the opposite of what a blog stands for, even though they function much like most blogs, posting stories with dates, titles, in categories, and chronologically ordered. It will take lots of guts, the right marketing strategy, and a keen sense in business management to pull off the transition Michael Arrington is talking about. He has already hired several key individuals to kick his idea into gear, key players like Harde, Rupert Murdoch’s former mergers and acquisitions specialist. Hopefully with all his efforts in place he will be able to pull it off, if not, I feel sorry for the guy. Well, they do say that with great risk comes great success.
Jul 12th 2007
That Bob Head of Michael Arrington is HILARIOUS!
Jul 12th 2007
I agree, it would change the whole concept behind techcrunch. Nice post!
Jul 12th 2007
yup it would take some balls to make that move without messing it all up for him
Jul 12th 2007
Yeah, that bobble head cracks me up too, if he ever sees it, he’ll probably say something like, ” ah man, I should have known that bobble head was going to come back and hunt me sooner or later”..
Jul 12th 2007
Holy molly…. I didn’t know there was an actual bobhead of Michael, it goes great with the post too!!! Michael should really develop that idea and rethink it some more. It would really suck to see him jump into that and fail.
Jul 13th 2007
Seems like a new idea that I haven’t seen before. Look at how successful Wikipedia has become, and all it’s user-generated information. Would make sense to have tech reviews coming from bloggers with the technical know-how and hands on experience.
Jul 13th 2007
True Mike, but my point was that it would seize to be a blog and would turn into some what of an online magazine or news website. Remember that paid bloggers are paid writers.
Wikipedia was written by the people, no one was paid for it so there are no conflicts of interest on there.
Jul 13th 2007
I don’t know how much money there is in blogs, unless it money derived from advertising.
They have probably gotten so much traffic, they figure the next step is to branch out and become something bigger. Im not too sure how well the whole “crunch” theme would do for them.
Oct 21st 2007
Blogs are great since they create a powerful publishing platform for individuals to voice their opinions without the filter of advertising influenced editorial boards. On the other hand, it is way to soon to say what the boundaries of what blogging ought to be. Personally I’m quite excited about the possibilities, particularly the way magazines and journals can be transformed utilizing blog software.
The New York Times, a large publishing outfit with a slew of opinions to share, has done an exceptional job of integrating blogs into their traditional offerings. I think it is great that a blogger has created enough leverage for himself to be able to expand his blog into a group effort that will expand coverage on the subjects he is canvassing. He already has a bank of advertisements on his blog so that is a path towards a conflict of interest already. However, if he can create a niche for himself covering a subject that transforms his roll from blogger to publisher of blogs, I applaud him.
Dec 30th 2007
Great article. I just wish Michael Arrington would contact me since I’ve owned musiccrunch.com for over eight years.
Dec 31st 2007
thanks