Thursday, October 11, 2007

TechCrunch Cutbacks Defy the Hype

It's fine to be TechCrunch and cut back on the rate you are paying your bloggers if: you can't be profitable at the current rates, if ad sales isn't expected to grow sufficiently, or if you are trying to appear a bit leaner to prospective buyers.

But boasting about revenues on one hand and cutting back on the other don't wash, and TechCrunch is being called on the carpet for hypocrisy. TechCrunch might have expanded to quickly, but the cutback underlies the difficulty in blogging for money. You need a large audience of a desirable demographic with targeted ads.

Even though the TechCrunch home page has more ads than a Nascar jumpsuit, the revenue isn't enough, at least according to the latest moves.

Complicating this story is hype-meister Henry Blodget saying that TechCrunch could fetch up to $100 million from CNET. At the same time you have CNET and ZDNet writers questioning TechCrunch's traffic/value.. So is this disparaging a company that you want to acquire for less? I'm sure CNET's bloggers aren't aware of the any conversations between the companies, but appearances are everything.

Posted By John Gartner at 11:14 AM
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