June 12, 2007

Happy Second Birthday, TechCrunch

Michael Arrington

82 comments »

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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Comments

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  1. Zoli Erdos

    And I thought growing to 5000 subscribers in a few months was a big deal at the time of the 3rd TC BBQ:-)

  2. Kiran

    Congrats guys!

  3. Michael Arrington

    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

  4. Stephen Sclafani

    Happy Birthday, Mike.

  5. Richard MacManus

    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.

  6. sean percival

    Great to hear and congrats

  7. Bobby Andersen

    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.

  8. Caleb Posner

    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?

  9. Eric Willis

    Has it been that long already?!..jeez. I’ve been reading daily almost since the launch…

    Congrats Mike.

  10. Eniac

    Congratulations, it is really enjoyable experiance havin you in RSS reader… Thanks, keep up good work!

  11. Zoli Erdos

    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…

  12. Robin Wauters

    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.

  13. Frank Gruber

    Congratulations Mike & TechCrunch crew on turning 2! ;)

  14. Alex H

    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.

  15. jay

    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.

  16. Faisal

    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 :)

  17. JamesBruni

    Congrats on your Second B-Day. The Law World’s loss was our gain.

  18. Loic

    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.

  19. KevinL.

    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.

  20. Case Stevens

    Congratulations Michael.

    You’re a great example of what lots of us try to reach.
    You DID it. Big difference!
    Kudos.

  21. Loic

    and congrats anyway of course !

  22. Michael Arrington

    Loic, I made a correction above.

  23. 80/20

    congrats, TC

    other so-called TC-like sites are probably loathing at this moment right now - you know who you are.

  24. Peter Cooper

    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!

  25. Vik

    Congrats to the TC team. BTW, the party pics look great and Heather looks even better.

  26. techmine

    Congrats guys! I learned all the buzz about web2.0 and more, here on TechCrunch.

  27. yodel

    Woo! It’s my birthday too.

  28. heri

    congrats michael. you can be proud of yourself. because of TC, i have unsbscribed from businessweek and got TC’s feed instead

  29. Robert Bruce

    Mike et al,

    Here’s a little video birthday card.

    Happy 2nd.

  30. ipanema

    Happy birthday TechCrunch! May you continue to grow and deliver those tech write ups. I’m learning. For a non-techie, that’s big. :)

  31. Wes

    Congrats at turning 2!

    Its been good.

  32. Rachel

    Love this site!

  33. Peter

    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!?

  34. Yakito

    wow just 2 years. Well done, a big inspiration.

    Congratulations!

  35. Danilo

    Thank you for great stories!

  36. Andrew

    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!

  37. Jay Meattle

    @Mike and Team - Hearty congratulations!

  38. Robert Bruce

    Crap.

    From #29 above, TC’s bday card is actually here.

  39. Brent

    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

  40. Emre Sokullu

    Congratulations Michael and the team! 2 years, so fast…

  41. tomthree

    happy birthday!

  42. Silicon Dalley

    Keep up the good work Michael. TechCrunch has done it the right way.

  43. Shankar Ganesh

    I love you guys. Keep on rocking!

  44. Scott Taylor

    Congrats Mike, keep it up :) and hopefully we will be saying the same thing this time next year.

    Cheers,
    Scott

  45. Ouriel Ohayon

    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

  46. kamla bhatt

    Congrats and wishing you all the very best for the next year.

    Kamla

  47. Stanley Miller

    63 to over 400K. That’s a nice multiple! Congrats! -Stan

  48. Khuc

    Congrats and thanks for your service!

  49. Vikrant Sharma

    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.

  50. Amy Wilsch

    @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 :)

  51. Matt Hickey

    I like how your camera makes me look 25 pounds heavier, and like I always have a beer in my hand. Keep up the good work.

    Thanks for the couch. See ya in a couple months. Beers are on me next time, yo.

  52. articles

    happy brith day to tc anfd hope you will mantion your groth in coming year also

  53. Basheir Hashim

    Happy 2nd birthday Micheal, great blog. I have a request though, I have sent a number of email trying to get more information about your September conference but no luck. How can I ensure that have confirmed my booking? I will be flying in from abroad.

    Basheir

  54. Orli Yakuel

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2.0!!

    Congratulations and a special thank you for your help and support Mike.

    Keep up the good work!

    Orli

  55. EJ Passeos

    Happy Birthday!

  56. Micha

    Happy Birthday, TechCrunch : - )

  57. Tobbi

    Congratulations to you Techcrunch-Team. It’s a very, very good blog!

    Best regards,
    Tobbi

  58. Smaran

    Cool. Happy Birthday, TechCrunch! And congratulations to Mike and the team!

  59. Sean Dunleavy

    Congratulations to the TechCrunch Team on your outstanding success. Being reading for almost a year, and it is the most compelling intro into Web 2.0!

  60. douglas mcintyre

    Amazing. Show that good content trumps everything else

  61. .NET Practice Test

    You rock techcrunch.

    I remember the BED New York Party, the way TechCrunch brings together the Web 2.0 Gang..nobody does.

    Three Cheers to TechCrunch!!!

  62. Free Internet Web Meeting : MeetFlex

    Keep up the great work Michael. Long live TechCrunch

  63. Atul Karmarkar

    Congrats & keep up the good work, guys…

    You ROCK !!

  64. patricia

    Aw, congrats!!

    Success well deserved :)

  65. Concrete Stain

    Thanks TC for doing so well /

    - also mike you deserve every penny you have earned from TC.

    - RB

  66. Len Boyko

    It’s got a great beat, and you can dance to it…………

  67. MattK

    Happy anniversary! I am one of your new readers, taking pleasure in all of the cutting edge products you regularly cover. I don’t go anywhere else for my tech news as you provide ample coverage.

  68. Tanaka

    congratulation TC people, as a “baby” entrepreneur I feel great hearing you, 2year old “kids” are so strong and healthy!

    cheers

    Tanaka

  69. Benedict Herold

    Happy Anniversary TC and congrats to all TC editor! Good Work!

  70. Sylvain

    Happy Birthday TechCrunch ! ;-)

  71. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    Congrats Mike. You have every reason to be proud. Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of the past year.

  72. john

    looks like i missed one hell of a sausage fest!

  73. Steven Marder

    Mike: Major congrats to you on this milestone reflecting your continued vision, drive and the wonderful insanity you and all of us passionate entrepreuners have to create and build something of value against all odds. With all the challenges that success brings, you have kept your insightful and damn jaded perspective :)….though I do miss the backyard BBQs….enjoy….cheers

  74. Reg

    Great Job.
    http://www.regnordman.com/

  75. Alan Parekh

    Congrats Mike! Lets see what the next two years bring.

  76. Tony Chen

    Ouriel Ohayon

    June 12th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

    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

    Official TC writer?

  77. james

    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    happy birthday to me
    please send me a card!

  78. Taylor Moore

    Hey Happy, Happy to the TC crew. I am a daily reader, and have learned a hell of alot through the evolution of TC….here’s to 2 more years of growth.

    TM
    http://www.bikinizero.com