2007 Crunchies: The Winners
A great evening was had by all tonight as some of the leading startups gathered for the first annual Crunchies, a joint production between Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, GigaOm and TechCrunch. — The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results.
Context & Ripple Effects
The first Crunchies ceremony was announced in November 2007 as a joint production by TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat and GigaOm — four competing blogs pooling their audiences for one event. By late December the process had drawn 82,000 nominations across twenty categories, with readers voting on the finalists in the final round.
Tonight's winners close that loop, and the surprises in the results give the young award its first credibility test. The broader signal is that the blog networks of 2007 are now convening and ranking the startup ecosystem they cover.
First-order effects
- Winning startups get a reader-voted credential backed by 82,000 nominations — a marketing asset for fundraising and hiring that no single blog could confer alone.
- The four co-producers convert their editorial authority into an owned annual franchise, deepening reader engagement at each outlet simultaneously.
Second-order effects
- Competing media players face pressure to launch or align with rival award events rather than concede the 'industry recognition' niche to this coalition.
- Startup PR teams recalibrate outreach calendars around nomination-and-voting cycles, giving the co-hosting blogs structural leverage over which companies get exposure.
Third-order effects
- If the Crunchies recur annually, tech blogging consolidates from commentary into institution-building — awards, rankings and events become part of how the ecosystem allocates attention.
- A durable template emerges for cross-outlet collaboration among competitors: share the audience-costly rituals, keep the scoops competitive.
The trend: Tech blogs are evolving from news outlets into industry institutions whose awards and rankings help set which startups get attention.