TDH: Portfolio » TechCrunch

ReadWriteWeb Likes Embargoes

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:53:40 +0000

As a response to the TechCrunch decision to not respect embargoes, ReadWriteWeb says they’ll keep abiding them. Why? Their reasoning stands, although I still think it is a silly race to be the first, just with a little more time.

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TechCrunch to Break Every Embargo

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:18:19 +0000

Yes! Finally! This is what is needed: Someone big needs to lead the way of compulsive embargo breaking. I can’t imagine the amount of email Michael Arrington gets, but I know that the ones that hit me for the Blog Herald from PR firms are 90% ignored, with lots of dupes.

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I’m Getting Michael Arrington’s Fan Mail

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:28:41 +0000

This pinged in my inbox yesterday, in response to the TechCrunch getting sued story on The Blog Herald:

You little bitch:

Arrington is crying foul bc he’s scared. It’s patent litigation, moron. Why don’t you engage in some enterprise reporting and find out what’s REALLY going on. Start by reading today’s LA Times and SF Chronicle.

Arrington is a big ball of hot gas. He aint gonna give you no job. Might as well show some integrity and try to be fair in your reporting.

Douchebag.

Naturally, this is just someone having a hard time getting in touch with Michael Arrington, but obviously doesn’t want to sue, so she or he is trying to get his TechCrunch fan mail reach its destination through me. I find it hilarious, how about you?

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Syndication Gone Bad

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:35:57 +0000

I had no idea that TechCrunch content was syndicated to Washington Post, but apparently it is. However, the solution seems a bit broken, just look at the screenshot below:

It is a syndicated version of this post, and the culprit is obviously the formatting of the line-breaked e-mail sent by Jason Calacanis (who incidentally quitted blogging recently), blockquoted in the TechCrunch post.

This is the way it was supposed to look:

Naturally, this is something that needs to be remedied.

I’m constantly surprised on how often content syndication goes astray. Some issues surrounding images are to be expected, after all, if I’ve got a content area that is 600 pixels wide, for instance, and I’m doing graphics to illustrate my content to fit that width, this will look funky in tighter designs. However, the issue described above is text being processed poorly. I think it is the line-breaks that does it, WordPress (which TechCrunch uses) is pretty forgiving when copy-pasting stuff into its interface, and handles line-breaks well enough. Depending on how the content is shipped to Washington Post, this could be an issue.

Syndication gone bad, since the reader won’t know that it looks and plays nicely at its source (being the original TechCrunch post), this gives a negative impression of both Washington Post and the TechCrunch brand.

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Where is CrunchGames, Michael Arrington?

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:22:01 +0000

I’m surprised that Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame, haven’t launched a game blog for his TechCrunch network yet. There were rumors about something like this a year or two ago, but nothing more. There’s eight blogs in Arrington’s network, including his own CrunchNotes blog, and CrunchGear (currently CrouchGear, funny story that shouldn’t surprise anyone).

So where is CrunchGames, Mike? You know you should do it!

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If I did an Online Video Show, I’d do it like this

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:10:18 +0000

Online video is big, that’s nothing new. Lots of people want to get into it, post-Rocketboom and whatnot. And there are some great content out there, I just recently found Natali Del Conte’s show TeXtra (via CrunchNotes), which is the perfect example of a great online video show (or podcast if you prefer). They have some budget there, I can imagine, since they managed to lure Natali from TechCrunch, not known to be paying its writers scraps – but what do I know?

Anyway, online video is big, and I’ve been wanting to dabble with it. I actually bought a Sony handycam a little while back, just to see what I could do with it.

So how would I launch a video show?

I’ve got the strategy all worked out, and although celeb news like PopCrunch would probably work best, this should work for any type of quality video content. Yeah, content is king here as well, it’s bitch but whatcha gonna do?

The requirements for success

Let’s face it, some things is just needed for actual success. You might not quite live up to it all the time, and if you don’t it will weigh you down, but that doesn’t mean that all is lost – you’ll just have to fight an uphill battle, but those can be won as well, so don’t take these too seriously.

You need an adequate studio. This doesn’t mean that it has to be state of the art, it just have to suit your needs. Avoid doing your video show with the kitchen sink in the background – get a backdrop or choose a nice looking wall. Make sure it looks nice and fits your video show’s style. Doing one on extreme sports? Consider venturing into the concrete jungle, using graffiti in the background, or whatever. Use you imagination.
You need a good-looking host. Well, technically I guess not all video shows need a host, but most of them do, and s/he should be good-looking. The bigger boobs, the better, in some cases – but not all! Let’s not fall into this one, shall we? Video is a visual medium, so you need someone who works on camera, with a voice that carries. Some people do, others don’t. Your target audience governs this as well, so make sure you know it before selecting your host, or the style you’ll dress yourself in.
You need hardware equipment that gets the job done. A HD camera is great, but not necessary. Get a camera that does the job and is easy enough to manage, as well as the light sources needed to make it all work out. I’d say lights are more important than camera quality, but that’s a generalization of course. Consider an external microphone, video cameras usually suck in this aspect. Also remember that sometimes the equipment needed is just your webcam, although it will probably make it a lot harder on you.
Get the software you need. There are a bunch of choices here. Get one that does it for you, and don’t overspend until you know what you need. Alternatively, get someone to do the editing for you.
Get a quality jingle and intro spot. Not all video shows need a serious intro spot, sometimes just putting a logo up there, and fading to the first segment, does the trick. You should, however, get a jingle to go with it, as this will help create awareness and brand your video show. If you’re not a musician you should hire one to do this for you. There are free sound snippets out there which might do it for you, but you should consider having one custom made.

Five points to consider. It all boils down to how professional you want your video show to appear.

Getting the viewers

What’s a video show without anyone watching it? Lots of money and time spent for nothing, I’d say, so here’s how you’ll attract your viewers.

Get a kickass blog. Video shows and blogs go hand in hand, so have a designer do a kickass blog theme for you, and get blogging. Naturally, you’ll want to feature your latest episode from the video show on all pages, leading people into viewing it.
Offer subscription methods. While not all are RSS users, a lot actually are, so make sure they can subscribe to new episodes. Also offer e-mail subscriptions, and make your show available via iTunes. Most of this comes with the blog, actually, but if not you really should utilize it – it keeps viewers coming back. Feedburner helps.
Use YouTube for promotion. YouTube has a ton of visitors, and you can really find yourself lost browsing it. Use that! Do a special YouTube version of your video, promoting your website extra hard at the beginning and in the end, promising higher quality video if they visit it. YouTube is free, embeddable and totally awesome for these things – I can’t believe more video shows aren’t doing it! It’s a free commercial that can show up just about anywhere, for Pete’s sake!
Use a high quality video provider for distribution. Keeping in line with the promise on YouTube, that there’ll be higher quality versions on your site. You’ll accomplish this by using any of the numerous video providers out there offering this. And you know what? Many of them, such as Metacafé and Revver, offer revenue options, so you might even earn an extra buck doing this. Also, make sure that you don’t post the YouTube version of the video, they should be different, although you need to keep in mind that these services also are embeddable.
Do niche partnerships to attract more visitors. Find blogs in the same niche as your video show, and make a deal with them. The ideal solution is to have them post the latest YouTube version in the sidebar, if you want readers to come to your site for the full version. However, if you’re just interested in getting more viewers, not caring where they actually watch your show, then make use of the provider of your choice. Since doing this will add to the partner’s content, it shouldn’t be so hard hammer these partnerships out.

Another five tips on achieving video show success. They’re all linked, of course.

What do you think? Have you perhaps launched a video show already, or are you considering doing it? What are your tips on this matter?

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Blogs and forums, do they match?

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:31:24 +0000

Web 2.0 startup news blog TechCrunch, headed by bigshot Michael Arrington, have launched discussion forums. Last year girly gadget blog Shiny Shiny did the same and they were not alone.

Forums are great, but I don’t want to see them as a necessary feature on blogs; the communication possibility is already there, in the comments. Sure, they’re tied to one particular subject – the blog post of course – but still. If you add a forum and encourage your readers to participate in discussions in it, you’ll soon see that the amount of comments on your posts will decline. The same discussion that normally would occur in your post comments, with the possible benefit of actually making the content better, now resides on your forum.

That’s not so bad? Well, it is, because you’ve probably written your blog posts for a reason, and your view on the topic in question can evolve when your readers weigh in. Compare that to the forum, where of course the same thing can come up, but it’s more likely to be less focused and therefore perhaps not going the full length.

Now, if I were in Arrington’s place I would’ve done the same thing. It would have been a cleaner solution perhaps, but too would launch forums. He’s got the massive amount of readers that is needed to support both forums and comments. But more importantly, he’s got the spin-off in the fact that he now won’t need to cope with as many e-mails about start-ups that wants him to give them coverage: they’re directed to the forum! A smart move.

You should only start a forum for your blog if you:

Have lots of readers who comment all the time.
Can integrate it smoothly in your blog design.
Can offer the same login for both your blog and forum (dual memberships for one site are not OK).
Have the time to moderate the forum.
Have extra content and/or value to entice readers to be active in your forum.

TechCrunch fails 3, I’m sure they’ll manage 4 although that’ll be one to watch. One could argue that they haven’t integrated the forum well enough, but I’ll let ‘em pass there, although the solutions clashes a bit it still shares most of the TechCrunch elements. Check them out.

Do consider these points before adding a forum, and also do take a moment to think about what forum software to use. And most importantly, think long and hard what you’ll gain from launching a forum, and what you’ll lose. As always you need a plan to succeed.

I still believe that the absolute majority of blogs are better off without forums.