TechCrunch reigned for years as the place to talk innovation. Their format of journalistic blog post followed by commentary attracted everyone from hard-core developers to venture capitalists.
It was not unusual to see dozens if not hundreds of comments with each post.
Take a look today and you’ll see that’s changed. Four out of five TechCrunch posts garner less than 10 comments. TechCrunch has been displaced by Twitter as the place to talk innovation.
The business takeaway:
- Join the conversation on Twitter. If you want to talk innovation, that’s where you need to be.
- Rethink your marketing spend. It’s not just the newspaper’s advertising-based business model that’s threatened. It’s the news portal sites as well. Look carefully at how you spend your sales and marketing dollars – you may find the money better spent on social media.
- Be careful about who you follow. If you’re worried that Twitter will waste your time with mindless posts about Balloon Boy, then you’ll need to curate your follow list carefully. As far as innovation news goes, here’s who I like to follow:
- http://twitter.com/leolaporte Leo Laporte (general tech)
- http://twitter.com/InFullBloomUS Naomi Bloom (HR thinker)
- http://twitter.com/PracticalHacks Practical Hacks (Gadgets and gear)
