What Exactly Am I Doing Here At Uncrunched?
William Shatner once asked me what exactly I was doing at TechCrunch, the blog I started in June 2005. Let's put aside the fact that I was testing out a new service that got celebrity autographs and a video in exchange for cash.
Context & Ripple Effects
Michael Arrington started TechCrunch in June 2005, and by October 2007 the San Francisco Chronicle was using him as Exhibit A in how very profitable blogs had become. The question of what exactly he is doing resurfaces now that he is answering it on Uncrunched, his own site, rather than the outlet he founded — prompted, he says, by a real question from William Shatner.
First-order effects
- Arrington's writing now lives on Uncrunched, so the audience he built at TechCrunch over six years must choose between following the masthead or the person.
- Shatner's blunt question gives Arrington a hook to defend the founder-blogger role at a moment when he has been openly hostile to his own industry, including a May 2011 broadside telling the tech press to screw itself.
Second-order effects
- TechCrunch confronts the test every founder-fronted media brand eventually faces: whether its traffic and authority hold up once the founding voice publishes elsewhere.
- Rival blogs and their backers get a live case study in whether reader loyalty attaches to a named individual or to an institution — data that shapes how future blog founders negotiate ownership and exits.
Third-order effects
- If the audience follows the person, the durable value in tech media sits with named individuals rather than mastheads, pushing acquirers and advertisers to price personality alongside reach.
- The episode feeds the ongoing argument — visible in earlier debates over citizen journalism's flaws — about where the line sits between participant and press, a line founder-bloggers keep redrawing.
The trend: Founder-led tech blogs are entering the phase where the personal brand is tested against the publication it built.