The Crunchies: Finalists Are Up, Vote For the Winners
The nomination process for the Crunchies, a joint effort between us, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat and GigaOm, is now complete. — 82,000 nominations were made for thousands of individual startups. The top startups in each of twenty categories have made it to the final vote.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Crunchies began in November 2007 as a joint project of TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat and GigaOm — four of the largest independent tech blogs pooling their reach rather than competing for the same startup-coverage audience (Meet the Crunchies). The nomination window closed with 82,000 submissions across thousands of startups, and the finalists announcement narrowed the field to twenty categories.
What changes with this post is the mechanism: selection shifts from an editorial or nominating committee to an open reader vote. That makes the awards a test of which startups can mobilize their own user bases, not just which ones bloggers favor.
First-order effects
- The twenty finalist startups gain a community-voted credential they can cite in funding pitches and press outreach during the voting period.
- The four organizing blogs convert their combined readership into measurable engagement through cross-linked voting, deepening the consortium formed when they launched the event.
Second-order effects
- Established tech-award organizers face a reader-voted format backed by four high-traffic blogs, pressuring them to add open voting or cede the 'people's choice' framing.
- Finalist status becomes a filtering signal for journalists and investors sorting through thousands of 2007-era startups, concentrating attention on the shortlisted companies.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, blog consortia institutionalize themselves as annual gatekeepers between startups and mainstream attention, with community votes adding a legitimacy layer on top of editorial coverage.
The trend: Independent tech media is converting audience participation into institutional power, using jointly run annual awards to shape which startups capture attention.