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0 pointsnir16y ago0 comments

"sales and marketing" != "having a popular blog"

EDIT (for some reason reply doesn't seem to work): TC is a hugely popular site, of course, but my point is that sales and marketing is a lot more than what any website can do. They can have huge impact on a website's traffic (though the long term effect is arguable) but getting readers to follow a link isn't the same as getting them to pay a few hundred $ for a product.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

breck16y ago· 4 in thread

Since when is TechCrunch just a blog? They have multiple blogs that get millions of readers. They have conferences and meetups throughout the world that are covered by major media outlets. They run the most successful startup contest around, where companies like Mint, Dropbox, and Yammer publicly launched.

It sounds like Fusion Garage and TechCrunch did a terrible job at setting clear expectations about the partnership from the beginning, but to call TechCrunch just another blog is not accurate.

prakash16y ago

http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/05/53651.html?cid=17189379

skmurphy16y ago

The "53,651 readers in the Silicon Valley echo chamber" argument in 2006 had more force than "only 3,739,000 readers in 2009." TechCrunch now clearly has a larger reader base than early adopter in Silicon Valley.

breck16y ago

Good point. But TechCrunch has become 1 or 2 orders of magnitude bigger since this post. Also, I think a large segment of the target market for this product is this exact market that is very familiar with TechCrunch.

Teulon16y ago

I was considering getting one of these when it was released and I live in Wausau, Wisconsin.

tptacek16y ago

It does look like they did more than just lend the project the blog; for instance, TC sent people physically to Asia to do some unspecified thing. But that fits with a narrative of the original agreement being fuzzy, and TC getting more serious towards the end when they saw the project was actually going to come to fruition.

Keyframe16y ago

People tend to forget, and especially so here, that there is another world outside of interwebs - with different approaches to marketing/sales, and those work on a few levels above web in terms of volume pushed.

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