Web 2.0: `a read and write mechanism'
Michael Arrington, founder and writer of TechCrunch, has become a go-to person for many of the new Silicon Valley Internet companies hoping to strike it big. — Foremost for the companies is to get featured in TechCrunch (www.TechCrunch.com) …
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch has spent its first months turning a solo blog into the default launch pad for Web 2.0 companies — Michael Arrington's December list of the Web 2.0 companies he couldn't live without showed how much attention he alone allocates, and his full profile of Windows Live right after Microsoft's November Live event showed mainstream product news flowing through him first.
The Mercury News piece matters because it is a legacy outlet certifying that shift: Arrington is framed not as a commentator but as infrastructure, the go-to stop for startups hoping to strike it big. When a newspaper profiles a blogger as a distribution chokepoint, the story is no longer the products — it is who decides which products get seen.
First-order effects
- Startups now plan launches around a single writer's editorial judgment, making TechCrunch coverage a scarce, contested resource rather than a byproduct of good PR.
Second-order effects
- Mainstream outlets like Mercury News respond by covering the gatekeeper himself, effectively legitimizing blogs as press peers and pushing PR firms to build direct relationships with individual writers instead of editors at mastheads.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, attention intermediation in venture-backed software consolidates around named individuals whose picks can move startups' fortunes faster than traditional reviews — concentrating influence in ways that raise conflict-of-interest questions as the same person covers, courts, and is courted by the companies he writes about.
The trend: Web 2.0's launch economy is shifting from institutional media gatekeeping to influential individual publishers, with TechCrunch the clearest early instance of the type.