That’s like saying race car fans don’t like the multi-car pileups, or hockey fans hate the fights. Let’s just be honest about it. Geeks have “i-told-you-so” type personalities, and as such, love to hear about other people’s failures.

“Sorry. I really don’t know what I wrote. Must be the four Red Bulls I had this morning.
Please disregard.”

That was someone faking to me.

I do not think that TC is sensationalizing the downturn, nor are you making the deadpool or layoff tracker any type of sport.

Other people, however, will enjoy the “sport” of tracking the downturn, but you cannot help that. As to why they see the sport in it I do not know, but I suspect it mostly comes from people who:
(a) worked at a startup and saw a lot of stupidity and arrogance in the 2.0 bubble
(b) never jumped into 2.0 and are experiencing schadenfreude looking at what’s happening to the “others” who went ahead and dove into 2.0
(c) never understood how AdSense could support and prosper as widespread VC-evenutually-IPO-or-acquisition opportunity . Most 2.0 sites seemed to be purely based on AdSense or some “future advertising opportunity”.

and to all the phantom haters i will stack the relevancy of my comments against any of ya’all anyday.
look below somebodies been talking about you fools!
http://www.wire.../16-11/st_essay

Were ANY of you around for “The Bust”? Hell, at least Web 1.0 at left a pretty strong foundation behind. Web 2.0 will leave, at best: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube. The rest of it’s legacy? A bunch of the crappiest ideas that mainstream America never, ever bought. You think Twitter is changing the world? Not even close. Sure, it had it’s day in the sun, but nowadays it’s clogged with a bunch of self-obsessed morons who think the rest of us give a shit about the type of cappuchino they just drank. That, and PR people scrambling to add “Web 2.0″ to their resumes, since their agencies have just now realized that they’re more fucked than they were in 2001.

TechCrunch has actually provided a little value to the Web 2.0 disaster. They take a look at all your crappy ideas, and if they like it, you have a tiny shred of hope one of the Web 1.0 survivors might shell out $20 mil for you once everyone realizes you haven’t a prayer at positive revenue.

TechCrunch gets it, even if many of you are still living in a bubble.

99% of this last generation of start-ups, whether you’ve realized it or not, are now deadpools. Maybe that’s why you’re so offended by TC’s coverage. Even if you have money in the bank, even if you’ve slashed your workforce to “weather the downturn”, you’re dead. You will never regain the momentum lost. As soon as your uniques flatten off from the lack of marketing and innovation, your VCs will look at ways to minimize their losses. You think because you got the money that you absolutely get to keep it?? Think again.

TechCrunch is doing you a favor by giving you as much advance warning as possible. To reference Jack Nicholson,,,, “You want the truth? (Maybe) You can’t handle the truth.”

Web 2.0 will go down in tech history as a period of pure hype. So, so little substance. None of you are “changing the world,” as at least one commenter has claimed in this thread.

Yet, little do most of you know, there are now a few underground tech movements doing just that. There are things in the works that will make all you little Harvard MBAs run scared back to your midwestern hometowns. You don’t get tech. You were trying to sell ice to Eskimos, and for awhile you had Sand Hill snowed. But that’s changing fast.

The geeks are returning to the Valley en masse and have plans to retake control. The VCs know ‘em. They made them money before. They’ll make them money again. You all? Didn’t. Web 2.0 is dead. Thank God.

(Now, can y’all get the hell off the 101 please?)

A lot of these startups are absolute rubbish and when they fail, people can learn from those mistakes if they are aware of them.

Long Live the DEADPOOL!!!

second: and “what is happening” in the startup scene is useful information that other entrepreneurs & investors should be aware of, in order to adjust their strategies accordingly.

third: personally i don’t think the “downturn” is as bad as most folks are making it out to be, at least for the smaller / newer end of the startup world. tho the rest of the economy may be in tough times (some might say catastrophic), overall e-commerce & internet advertising growth is likely still growing at ~20-30% annually, or flat at worst. display advertising will be hurt most, but PPC advertising won’t be affected that much, and it’s possible since it’s a more measurable form of advertising it could even benefit from a pullback in ‘traditional’ advertising.

lastly, i would say there’s a little bit of theater being created here by later-stage companies and investors who have troubled business models / portfolio companies. the churn & upheaval in *mostly* uncorrelated markets is excellent cover for people to dump and/or make excuses for their losers. while this is a bit of a head-fake, it’s not unusual or unexpected. it’s also probably not too much of an exaggeration to suggest that some investors may even be trying to use the bad news as leverage for future negotiations.

however, let me be clear about one thing — for companies that DO have their shit together and have solid business models & good prospects for growth & revenue — i would not suggest you get too frightened. in fact, one could argue that the few companies that have a clue should press for leverage themselves, since they may be few & far between.

so if you ARE executing & making money & know your metrics, don’t be fooled into raising capital on too disadvantageous terms. it’s fine to have some extra dry powder in a tough market, but set your own terms — the VCs are probably at least as desperate as anyone else out there to invest in good companies.

all that aside: layoffs & fucked companies do happen. SSDD.

Nothing worse than “phantom comment hackers.”

FakeLocator.com-spill the real

>> “We do not take pleasure in seeing companies fail.”

Give me a break. TechCrunch loves reporting on failed companies. Of course it’s politically incorrect to say “we enjoy seeing companies fail”. No one will say it. But TechCrunch writers are human, and humans often take pleasure in others failures. It makes some people feel better about themselves, when others fail. I’m not saying TechCrunch likes all failures. But of course, they enjoy some.

And if someone hasn’t said it before, the coverage of layoffs is valuable to those of us who are actually hiring at the moment. It’s not as if every company in the world is only laying off. It gives us an opportunity to find some potentially great folks!

If you are affected by this downturn and you happen to be a great engineer still looking for a great startup to work at, please contact me!

Shan
shans ( a t ) docverse ( d o t ) com

Comparing layoffs at large companies is much diff than tracking layoffs of either (VC backed ofr non-funded start-ups) because it could be indicative the markets as a whole. Or – could be indicative of bad management & planning.

So while “deadpool” and “layoff trackers” might sound harsh, the data supplied in each, taken in context & relevancy, is helpful to all start-ups.