TechCrunch turned two yesterday. Like last year, I think its a good time to take a few minutes and give a report on the state of our blog network.
First, the stats. This is the 2,869th post on TechCrunch (a year ago we had just 884 posts, so the pace has quickened). 115,608 comments and trackbacks have been written by readers - an average of about 40 comments per post. A year ago we had 65,000 RSS readers; today we have 435,000. Page views over the last 30 days are right at 4.5 million, a little more than 2x last year’s rate. Technorati ranks TechCrunch as the 4th most linked to blog.
In the last year we’ve also had many full time contributing editors - Marshall Kirkpatrick, Natalie Del Conte and Duncan Riley. Analyst Nick Gonzalez has also taken a heavy writing load over the last few months, and a number of people have contributed articles as well.
Our sister blogs continue to grow. TechCrunch France is one of the largest French blogs, with nearly 100,000 RSS readers. CrunchGear has 50,000 RSS readers and is generating about 1 million monthly page views. They should become a top 100 blog in the next 6-8 months given their current growth rates. MobileCrunch and TechCrunch Japan continue to grow, and we will hopefully have TechCrunch UK back online soon.
Hiring Heather Harde as CEO was the best decision I’ve made so far. I was simply not able to leverage myself any further - writing full time, managing the other editors, selling ads and running the back office was killing me. Heather has stepped in and has brought calm to the chaos.
Heather suggested that we have a party to mark the occasion. I said it was a bad idea because we have so many other balls in the air: filling writing jobs, raising money, having a party next month and the TechCrunch20 conference in September. Heather said “ok,” planned a surprise party anyway and invited about 30 people over to the TechCrunch house last night. Pictures are up on Flickr under the tag “techcrunchbirthday2.” Many of my blogging mentors and friends were there to celebrate with us. Thank you all for coming.
The most important part of TechCrunch is the community that has built up around it. I have a dream job (for the most part) because of all of you. Thank you for stopping by, and leaving a little user generated content along the way.
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And I thought growing to 5000 subscribers in a few months was a big deal at the time of the 3rd TC BBQ:-)
Congrats guys!
Zoli, I chuckle when I read this post on my old personal blog. It was written on June 20, 2005, 9 days after TC started. I was jumping through hoops at having 63 readers.
http://www.arrington.us/?p=241
Happy Birthday, Mike.
hmmm, this sounds familiar: “writing full time, managing the other editors, selling ads and running the back office was killing me.”
But seriously, congrats Mike on the 2nd anniversary. It is awesome what you have achieved with Techcrunch; you have inspired me and I’m sure many others.
Great to hear and congrats
congrats - be interesting to know how many new subs you get daily from your deals outside of tc proper. seems like you cant sign on to any start page today without getting tc feed.
Congrats. TechCrunch remains, along with Read/Write Web, the best Web 2.0 blog on the web. I am however curious about a couple of things:
* What about TalkCrunch? Will there ever be a regular update schedule for it?
* Any plans to launch either a Hebrew version of TechCrunch or a TechCrunch Israel? I would think given the statistics, with which I’m sure you’re familiar, that it is ideal for the next localized launch.
* What happened to expanding the Crunch Network? I recall in past interviews you’d said TC was going to acquire a couple of other blogs, including a gaming one if memory serves. Have those plans been nixed? Or just delayed?
Has it been that long already?!..jeez. I’ve been reading daily almost since the launch…
Congrats Mike.
Congratulations, it is really enjoyable experiance havin you in RSS reader… Thanks, keep up good work!
63 readers? Wow, those must have been the times when you checked your log every 10 minutes and counted every dozen or so new readers
It would be interesting to know how many of those 63 may have started a blog *after* reading TechCrunch for a while and where are they now…
Congratulations! TC’s one of the first sites I’ll always check whenever I get the chance to sit back and read for a few minutes.
Congratulations Mike & TechCrunch crew on turning 2!
Huge congratulations Mike! Good work and may it long continue.
On a side note: Don’t you think there should be a feature of Flickr called Flickr Events? Sort of like Groups but instead it would make it easier than having to request tags (what if someone misspelled!) from people. Instead they could just align their photos with the event and it would act like a group and say that this photo also belongs to this event. Just an idea.
Congrats Mike!
Perhaps a redesign is in order, it did a lot for places like slashdot and engadget recently. Let’s be honest, it could be cleaned up a bit. Maybe a contest?
Anyway, congrats again, those numbers are astuonding for just 2 years online.
I remember your post last year about TC first year celebration , it was like yesterday.
Good work Michael.
You are becoming Morpheus of Matrix 2.0
Congrats on your Second B-Day. The Law World’s loss was our gain.
TC France is not “by far the largest blog in France”, only in RSS. By Technorati links mine is #1 by far and many blogs beat both of us in audience.
The coolest thing about you guys turning 2 and having so many readers is that the people at your party still seemed down-to-earth. Way to keep it real! Maybe next year you’ll have 4 girls at the party…. but don’t cross your fingers.
Good things aren’t made to last…. I hope you can always keep that grassroots nature, but the bigger you get things unfortunately will change. Enjoy it now.
Congratulations Michael.
You’re a great example of what lots of us try to reach.
You DID it. Big difference!
Kudos.
and congrats anyway of course !
Loic, I made a correction above.
congrats, TC
other so-called TC-like sites are probably loathing at this moment right now - you know who you are.
Congrats! I thought I’d take a trip through the archives to work out when I first came to TC, and seems about August ‘05, so not too long till my second anniversary here
Keep up the good work!
Congrats to the TC team. BTW, the party pics look great and Heather looks even better.
Congrats guys! I learned all the buzz about web2.0 and more, here on TechCrunch.
Woo! It’s my birthday too.
congrats michael. you can be proud of yourself. because of TC, i have unsbscribed from businessweek and got TC’s feed instead
Mike et al,
Here’s a little video birthday card.
Happy 2nd.
Happy birthday TechCrunch! May you continue to grow and deliver those tech write ups. I’m learning. For a non-techie, that’s big.
Congrats at turning 2!
Its been good.
Love this site!
Congratulations on everything Michael! All the best to TechCrunch!
You should write a book or something on how you’ve built such a successful online blog network! I’m sure everyone, myself included, would love that!?
wow just 2 years. Well done, a big inspiration.
Congratulations!
Thank you for great stories!
Congrats TechCrunch and Michael…..and Happy Bday. I check this site more than Yahoo!, Google and ESPN.com combined. This blog has helped me so much in the business and marketing world. Keep up the great work and Arrington please try to get some rest (the bags in your eyes from the photos) . We need you to stay healthy!
@Mike and Team - Hearty congratulations!
Crap.
From #29 above, TC’s bday card is actually here.
Happy Birthday! Seriously, this is one of my favorite resources for new tech products and internet sites. Thanks Michael!!!
http://brentevans.blogspot.com.....runch.html
Congratulations Michael and the team! 2 years, so fast…
happy birthday!
Keep up the good work Michael. TechCrunch has done it the right way.
I love you guys. Keep on rocking!
Congrats Mike, keep it up
and hopefully we will be saying the same thing this time next year.
Cheers,
Scott
Happy birthday to TechCrunch and congrats. Techcrunch France indeed appears in all main top blog rankings in France but is probably #1 or not far in terms of RSS suscribers
Congrats and wishing you all the very best for the next year.
Kamla
63 to over 400K. That’s a nice multiple! Congrats! -Stan
Congrats and thanks for your service!
Congrats Mike and team on TC’s second birthday. You guys are going great and make for some very interesting readings. As usual, I am TC fan and loyalist and keep referring everyone to TC.
Keep up the good work.
@Vik - i hope you can “see” all of the women rolling their eyes back into their heads….
TC - way to go. kind of cool how fast things can happen