The Crunch Network is expanding today - CrunchGear, our newest blog, was just released into the wild on a shiny new server. CrunchGear is all about new gadgets, gear and computer hardware. We’ve covered gadgets occasionally in the past (Sonos, Eye-Fi, Sony MyLo and others) and this audience in clearly intrested in the newest stuff to hit the market.
We’ve brought in a whole new team to run CrunchGear. The editor is John Biggs, who was previously the editor of Gizmodo. Under his watch, page views at Gizmodo grew from from 4 million to over 12 million per month. He is a seasoned journalist and blogger and knows how to write about exactly what his audience wants to read. John is working with a top team of writers, including Blake Robinson who writes the popular music blog audiomonger. More information on the team is on the CrunchGear About page. CrunchGear was designed by Jeremy Baines, the founder of ThisSideUp in London.
CrunchGear is going to be different from the other gadget blogs out there. The team is committed to writing about breaking news but will also be featuring weekly product comparisons in a given category. Expect CrunchGear to look like something between a pure blog and CNET Reviews. Our goal isn’t just to let you know about the hot new stuff coming out soon, but to also help you decide what kind of camera, laptop or MP3 player you want to buy as well.
There are a lot of new gadgets to hit the market every day, so expect a lot of posts on CrunchGear. If you’d like to subscribe to the RSS feed, it’s feeds.feedburner.com/crunchgear, or you can sign up on the home page to receive daily emails.
CrunchGear is our second product launch this month (we launched CrunchBoard last week). And we’re not done yet. We have two more blogs coming out in the next 30 days.
Looks good. Several nice reviews out-of-the-box.
Does the world need another gadget blog? I don’t really see what’s different about this one.
I will definitely be subscribing to this one. The article about Ballbot, the one-wheeled robot, was interesting! - A.
Hey - if anything, you’ll get to play with a ton of new gadgets
Wow, you guys are gonna be like the next weblogs, inc. with your whole crunch network. Very impressive, good work.
> Does the world need another gadget blog? I don’t really see what’s different about this one.
Well, time will tell, won’t it? I can’t see this as failing…so I guess the answer’s Yes.
Good job, Mike.
> Wow, you guys are gonna be like the next weblogs, inc.
Let’s hope not! LOL.
wtf is audiomonger? apparently it gets 16 visitors/day: http://extremetracking.com/open;sum?login=audiomon
And across the web all will hear the sounds of “Crunch, crunch, crunch!” :p
This site seems like a perfect addition to the Crunch Network.
I have to admit that my first reaction was “does the web need another gadget blog.” But, I have noticed that Gizmodo sucks a little lately. There’s absolutely room for improvement–open comments are a good start. I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.
i dont understand techcrunch’s blog orgy.
dont get me wrong, i read techcrunch every day. but come on. you keep rolling out one unneeded service after another. in such a short timespan, 5 new services have been created. i dont see why these new “topics” deserve their own SEPARATE blog.
why isnt a category system implemented? mobilecrunch under “mobile,” crunchgear (which by the way should have been dubbed “grunch”) under “gadgets” or “gadgetry” if you’re feeling fancy, crunchnotes under “editorial,” and regular under “web 2.0″ or the like.
the only site which i feels has any merit is crunchboard jobs - i have yet to use it, but it sounds like a great service.
talkcrunch.com … why does this exist? what about a link to the podcast? why its own blog?
apart from the recent spawning of other blogs, techcrunch is still great. interesting tidbits every day. so keep up the good work but dont get carried away. rhyme completely unintentional >_
Come on now.
Specialization is the key to success. Do what you know (i.e. web 2.0). TechCrunch absolutely rocks, but these push-button sites you keep dumping out are pretty lame. Obviously I am not the only person to feel this way.
But hey, nothing wrong with trying to make a buck.
Congratulations Mike!
CrunchGear will definetelly be a site of my morning list.
Sellout =P
This sucks. First the suck ass job board and now this.
I could give a shit about what you have to say about gadgets, there are a dozen out there who are already doing this, and they don’t get all high on themselves with job boards and other bullshit we-don’t-know-what-we’re-doing-with-this-derivative-products.
Oh hey guess what readers? Tech crunch is so clever with internet companies that they must simply be good at everything!
FOUR WORDS TECH CRUNCH:
Michael Jordan and Baseball
See the fuck up?
In fact, DIE TECH CRUNCH I UNSUBSCRIBE,
**you were cool before though**
ey com’on, is nothing wrong with trying to make more money, give it a shot, and make your comment in 3 months, It’s not Michael Arrington that’s writing it, so these peoples probably focus on the gear.
Anyway, if it looks good, i don’t look at new gear much, but i’ll check it out for a few weeks.
Then I’ll leave another comment on what I think.
The expansion continues… I can hardly keep up!
***# pete
August 10th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Does the world need another gadget blog? I don’t really see what’s different about this one.
***
Have to agree on this one… Same old stuff… Like every other Blog/Site these days just posting what 1000+ other sites do…
Guess we have to wait and see who the winner is…
It’s refreshing to read such heartfelt words.
The general blogging is just research and pagerank points for the comparisons, which are of course bait for the gadget firms, who are, along with a slice of the ad revenue action, bait for the writers. A big Google honeytrap sucking in ad revenue and scoring swag… CrunchGear will work out fine, even if TC’s über alpha beta fans only use it to get family and friends out of their hair.
Who said blogs were about individuals trying to vent out their passion (yup, passion can be vented
) into this world ?
So tell me again, what is the difference between old school journalism and new age blog networks?
I love gadgets so crunchgear is on my readlist anyway.
I agree with the others above, this reeks of monetization. No rational need whatsoever to make new “blogs” for all these different topics, ideas.
I can only assume that the thinking is that it can’t cost you anything to try these things. Why not direct and monetize all this traffic in anyway possible (sorry, but I’m a cynic). Unfortunately, you are wrong; this is so disingenuous I think its going to turn people away.
Don’t forget that trust between you and the readers is very important.
I disagree,
Mike has a great blog going here and more importantly has a fair bit of influence in what he says and where he can get his info.
If this can extend into the Gear world, then all the better I think particually because it will mean we get to see the latest products as soon as there released, if not well before.
I welcome all the more boards myself - if it “reeks of monetization” - who cares? Every website on the internet is about making money, and this is no different - you think servers are free and so are good writers?
Good on you Mike, the more blogs the merrier I say - just may sure that the writing quality is maintained and I’ll enjoy reading them no probs.
Fred
Alright! I’m definitely a gadget obsessive
Seems like you have great team so I’m excited to see how the blogs going to be.
Nice one! Subscribed.
To answer Pete’s question -
“Does the world need another gadget blog? I don’t really see what’s different about this one.”
I view it as at least complementary to Engadget and Gizmodo. Adds further perspectives. Plus credibility benefit from the ‘Crunch’ brand.
See how CrunchGear develops over time in terms of difference. There’s already a track record so the prognosis is favourable!
Tim
Tell him how you really feel
Tim, fix your 404 error before you burst a gasket
The way I see it CrunchGear probably is a result of all the pieces just being there–and less of some strategic “great idea” for expansion. Techcrunch decides it wants to expand. John Biggs is available and has the experience. Gadget blogs can be good money makers. Throw all these together and Arrington sees it as a good bet–even if it is completely unoriginal. I’m sure it’ll gain some measure of success. Anyway, it has to be a cool job. I’d review gadgets all day. Best of luck. Gadget blogs have been stagnant and the commentary on them has been more boring than usual lately. Competition will be good for us all.
Great…. thanks alot TechCrunch team. Now there’s even MORE ways to find cool new stuff to spend too much money on.
(OK, to be honest, I’m very happy about this new site. My wife, however….)
Looks like Techcrunch went down under all Tim’s rage
Cannot get to the site now.
Hey, Guys,
Just thought I’d drop my two cents into this crunchgasm. I appreciate your feedback and I’ll admit that when Mike approached me I thought him a bit tetched in the head. However, once I realized what he wanted to do and what kind of amazing audience he had, it really started to fall into place.
I consider this just like a radio station adding another DJ to its line-up or a TV network adding an evening anchor - I know I’m going old media here, but the analogy works. You guys love TC and you love gadgets, so I’m here to bring that unholy union to fruition. I was available and this is my “calling,” so I might as well do it for a cool guy for some cool readers.
That said, I NEED to know what you’re looking for. Drop me a line at john at crunchgear dot com and tell me what you like and don’t like about other gadget sites. I’ll create a thread over at CG so you can post there as well.
Thanks again, everybody. It’s an honor to serve you.
Congrats…. But on launch a generic WordPress error box?!
At least customize it with this hack!
http://www.uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/06/6845/
and to be fair wp is great on resources, considering this is on a new shiny server it can’t be that great a server (I very much doubt crunchgear got that much traffic on launch either)
Already saturated market and a blatant ‘made for adsense’ blog
It’s nice to see your expansion and development. Though, I won’t be subscribing. There’s just too much distraction and non-valuable things that pops up everyday.
But congrats, on your success…
you’re just doing for the free gadgets aren’t you?
hey, don’t worry, I don’t mind as long as you don’t suck.
Excellent start by the way with the wordpress error
“This sucks. First the suck ass job board and now this.
I could give a shit about what you have to say about gadgets, there are a dozen out there who are already doing this, and they don’t get all high on themselves with job boards and other bullshit we-don’t-know-what-we’re-doing-with-this-derivative-products.
Oh hey guess what readers? Tech crunch is so clever with internet companies that they must simply be good at everything!
FOUR WORDS TECH CRUNCH:
Michael Jordan and Baseball
See the fuck up?
In fact, DIE TECH CRUNCH I UNSUBSCRIBE,
**you were cool before though** ”
lol.
Well it’s clearly an attempt to make more money, can’t say I blame him though he is probably sick of all these multi millionaires coming to his house and leaving in their ferraris
celebcrunch.com will be next
I’m just wondering what the plans are for Talk Crunch, since its been over a month and a half since it was last updated. While I’m glad to see the Crunch network grow, I hope that it doesn’t get abandoned.
techcrunch should rename itself to VCCrunch.com
Mike,
In addition to Crunchboard.com, TechCrunch should start a means for the readers to connect / network with each other. I know that you have several parties open to the public near the bay area. However, living in RTP, NC..I cant make it to any of those..
I have a few ideas and would like to network around with other TC readers to see if anyone would be interested in teaming up for working on the idea. Since, its not a company per se, I am unsure if a posting on Crunchboard will be appropriate.
Also, you can probably start some thing to mentor others. Like, readers interested in getting mentored (on their entrepreneurial venture) sign up and then successful entrepreneurs, if willing sign up to mentor them — maybe for a fee, maybe for free..You can have a sign up fee for providing this broker service. Considering the highly tech-fanatic audience of your blogs, this service would hit the right spot and would be of a huge help to people like me.
thnx,
pranav.
Be more concise in your content, it look me a long time trying to see what you wrote.
Mike, I’m impress!
I love gadgets so I defiantly read that blog.
Keep up the good work and listen to your self and believe in what you do, this is the imported thing. If you love what you’re doing, noting else matter.
gprime, I agree with your opinion.
Orli
Stop the god damn trolling just because you see your own blogs going down the drain. If you have nothing positive to say an djust insulting dont say it. If your not gonna use the blog, fine! Dont use it. Thats it! Why make a big act out of it? Grow Up. If you don’t like Mike making numerous blogs GOOD FOR YOU! What the hell do you care how many blogs he makes. Is it really your concern? God.
this guy is just a blogger..a good blogger though..why you expect him to do something really impressive/original? If you want to check who is going to build new media empire etc. then you have to start looking elsewhere..those people think of building of either zero billion business or multi billion business..are you going to complain if someone who opens UPS store also starts selling greeting cards?
WOW.. No news today?!
yeah, no news to push this self promotion out of the top slot? We’re shocked.
I’ll read it, along with another few of my favorites. As long as the content is fresh and unique - it could find a niche.
http://briansolis.blogspot.com.....nches.html
Who could blame Mike for wanting a ton of free stuff?
This is just Mike’s way of making sure Xmas comes every day.
@Pranav, a network would be a good idea. however i’m waiting for the launch of http://wire23.net
CrunchBabble.com next?
http://nanek.wordpress.com/200.....chnetwork/
Regarding the free stuff angle: Yeah, this was my first thought. But John says ethically we have to return it or give it to charity or some nonsense, plus he lives in New York and I’m in Silicon Valley…so I assume very few gadgets will make it my way.
Regarding CrunchBabble - early name for TalkCrunch, was ditched just before launch. No plans to use it right now.