TechCrunch Hits 100k

I wrote that headline and realized that readers could interpret it as either monthly revenue or subscribers. Well, according to Feedburner, TechCrunch hit 100k readers right on the money - literally. And, take a look at Technorati's numbers...Techcrunch, Rank: 8 (43,393 links from 12,110 blogs).

While the number may read 100k, I believe that TechCrunch has had a much bigger impact than Feedburner or Technorati numbers can represent here.

Let's not talk about the accuracy or relevance of Web 2.0, or whether or not TechCrunch is losing its edge, or how much the CrunchNetwork brings in on a monthly basis, or whether or not TechCrunch UK or CrunchGear were good business ideas...it's all irrelevant at the moment. Afterall, 800 people clawed their way into TechCrunch7 and many, many more tried. Take a look at the flickr stream and its obvious that this crowd is enthusiastic, renewed, and inspired. The question is, whether or not it will ultimately invigorate the Silicon Valley economy. Oh, just a side note, it's annoying and somewhat tacky when you delete your older photos and re-upload them so that they'll always be close to the front when searching...you know who you are!

Regardless of opinions or skeptic observations, it's representative of a movement. People ARE ready to celebrate tech, the web, marketing, and networking. Hell bring Industry Standard back and let's get some rooftop parties going!

When Mike announced the milestone on CrunchNotes, A couple of the comments, other than, "congrats" were interesting and also enlightening:

Richard OCallaghan, August 29th, 2006
Congrats Mike!
Out of curiousity, What sort of rate is your readership increasing at?
Richard

Mike, August 29th, 2006
Thanks Richard. It was doubling every three months for the first year. For that trend to continue, though, we’d have to add another 50k subscribers by the end of September, which isn’t going to happen.

Dave Winer, August 29th, 2006
Sorry, I chose my words poorly. I was asking a question, curious to know how they (Feedburner) calculate that number. Clearly the number of hits they’re getting for your feed must be going up, and perhaps the number of unique IP addresses is going up too. Do they count all the readers at Microsoft as 1 subscriber? Just curious to know what the method is.
I congratulate you a lot Mike, as you noted there are lots of positive mentions of TechCrunch in the archive of my weblog. I didn’t mean it in a negative way.

The last comment lead to Winer's blog and a series of discussions around this topic to find the answer.

• Mark Fletcher writes that Bloglines reports the number of subscribers each time it requests the feed.
• Lorenzo Viscanti: "Feedburner's count is just an approximation."
• Feedburner: "Subscribers is an approximate measure of the number of individuals currently subscribed to your feed."

The explanations continue here.

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Tags: michael arrington, techcrunch, crunchnotes, scripting, dave winer, mark fletcher, lorenzo viscanti, feedburner, web2.0, web 2.0, parties, rooftop, industry standard, bubble, bubble 2.0, flickr, technorati, silicon valley