Finalists Announced for Crunchies Awards
The finalists have now been announced for the Crunchies, the awards show we're co-hosting with Techcrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat. Voting will be live through to midnight PST Thursday, January 10. You can vote here, once a day.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Crunchies were unveiled on November 6, 2007, when GigaOm introduced the awards show as a joint production of TechCrunch, GigaOm, VentureBeat and ReadWriteWeb — four of the era's most-read tech blogs pooling their audiences behind a single reader-voted prize. With finalists now announced and voting open once per day through January 10, the show moves from concept to its first live contest.
What makes the announcement matter is who is running it: by co-hosting rather than competing, the four outlets are attempting to make their combined readership the arbiter of startup legitimacy, turning an awards ballot into recurring traffic and a shared industry institution.
First-order effects
- Finalist startups gain a credential they can cite in pitch decks and press releases ahead of the January 10 vote close, while the four co-hosting blogs get a once-a-day voting mechanic that pulls readers back repeatedly through the holidays.
- ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat each funnel their own audiences toward the same ballot, concentrating attention — and pageviews — that would otherwise stay siloed at each outlet.
Second-order effects
- Other tech media titles face a choice between launching rival awards and lending their endorsement to the Crunchies, since a reader-voted prize backed by the four largest blogs sets the default template for startup recognition.
- Venture investors and acquirers get a cheap signal: a finalist slot or win functions as third-party validation of traction, feeding directly into funding conversations in early 2008.
Third-order effects
- If the first edition lands, audience-voted awards become a recurring fixture of the tech calendar, shifting some gatekeeping power over which startups count as 'best' from editors' picks to mobilized reader bases.
- The co-hosting model itself points toward blog-network alliances as a competitive response to larger media incumbents — shared events, shared ballots, shared authority.
The trend: Tech blogs are converting their aggregated readership into institutional authority, using reader-voted awards to formalize which startups gain visibility.