Focus on something you’re good at and don’t be all things to everybody. You can’t. That’s called YAHOO and that’s in trouble as well. Take a lesson, learn from it and when you want someone to run the place. Give Dvorak a call and tell him to call me.

In less than 12 months this company will be in the BLACK.

Michael Murdock, CEO
DocMurdock

What I will say is I’ll never visit TC again because it offers very little information and I don’t care for blogs. Blogging is like standing in the middle of Times Square and shouting out loud… nobody cares.

In my opinion, which nobody cares about, forums and blogs are hurting the Internet. I try and search for helpful information and I end up on some stupid forum with some knucklehead sharing his stupidity. This is why wikipedia works so well. It’s not a blog where people argue against each other, rather they keep the topic in check and try to make it as accurate as possible.

I still trust their News and Reviews to be the industry standard — there are tons and tons and TONS of blogs trying to be the new and best tech source, but many like TC, have become a stomping grounds for flaming whoever is bigger it seems. Akin to those that hate on everyone, to try and get to the top (flashbacks of high school come to mind).

I also like their blogs, which are professionally published and full of great content. I also like how they acknowledge reputable, true, tech blogs like Engadget (Ryan Block used to come on the show back in the James Kim days, RIP). I like reading TC as well, but it seems that they don’t associate with TC for good reason — there’s no unbiased, non-self-promoting content here. It’s almost as bad as Valleywag.

CNET realized that passionate users come to find out about tech, and they developed a strategy to target all passionate users in different realms like video games, television, food, and business tech. I agree that the future is moving away from general portals like Yahoo, and toward target content, but blogs will always supplement and never replace reputable news sources.

Perhaps they should call themselves “blog”, so idiots who claim “I don’t read news anymore, I switched to blogs” can be brought back in.

Would you please make your traffic stats public?

Is it really in good taste to predict the demise of companies and use examples like the one used, but yet HIDE your own traffic stats.

For years TechCrunch made them public, in the spirit of Web 2.0.
seoptimization.blog.com/1221628/

Additionally, can you release screenshots of the 2007 stats, including:

* Search engine referrers
* Social site referrers
* Keyword/ search terms
* Average time spent
* Geographic Demgraphics
* Unique visitors

We recently noted that CNET traffic has slumped, particularly when compared to large gains made by the NYT and others. The New York Times mentions this as well, and compares CNET News.com traffic to TechCrunch:

The company, founded in 1992, has more than 2,600 employees. It has been particularly hard hit because of increased competition in its core market from technology-focused blogs like TechCrunch, written by a handful of people at a fraction of the cost. In September, page views at TechCrunch surpassed those at CNet’s News.com, long considered the industry stalwart. In October, TechCrunch and its sister site had eight million page views compared with News.com’s six million page views, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Apples and Oranges. TechCrunch has become more of a Perez Hilton meets TMZ for tech gossip.

CNET needs to lose fat, focus on detailed product evaluations and expand on the community content,

I also found the comparison with TechCrunch to be amusing and clearly an lame attempt to pump up market value.

If CNET wants a serious readership, let them get back to real technology journalism, with real testing, and real stories; not the current babble over ten this or that this vs. that, and attempts to be funny.

When TechCrunch begins to write routinely in clear, understandable English, I’ll use it for its op-ed value. As it is now, I’m just tired of having to wade through sentences and paragraphs so poorly constructed I have to read them twice to puzzle out the meaning. This pub (and its audience) have grown entirely too big for its “whatever, dude!”, LiveJournal writing style.

It isn’t a matter of silly grammar rules. It’s a matter of attention to quality in general and the accuracy of communication in particular. Both are lacking here.

I’m back to CNET for now. YMMV. And probably does.

GJL

CNET needs to learn to embrace online communities, social networking and web 2.0.

Right now, CNET has a ton of information and content and great domains, but they have no real features to bring people together. Those features are the ones that can drive huge amounts of traffic and keep users constantly coming back.

CNET should start making some acquisitions that actually make sense and build their community and social newtorking offering, instead of buying content sites. They have enough content. It’s time to start getting users engaged.

I want fresh , informative stuff before other sites have it. TC seems to be the only one even trying to provide it.

———–
http://www.xenbet.com

And I agree with Steven, they have some awesome domains. I just wish they would do more things with them.

To be honest it could be something for TectCrunch to watch out for - getting too big can be your downfall. Keeping it small and personal is where the readers came from and thats where it needs to stay.

CNET just hasnt innovated enough to keep up with the times and have lost visitors left right and centre. They need to let their writers loosen up and have some freedom and cause some contraversy, that will get some readers back. Slamming TechCrunch could be a good start ;-).