TechCrunch

About TechCrunch

TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new web 2.0 products and companies. In addition to new companies, we will profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the web 2.0 space. TechCrunch is edited by Michael Arrington, who also writes a companion blog, CrunchNotes.

TechCrunch is featured on the Technorati 100, Feedster 500, CNet Top 100 Blogs and is a member of the Web 2.0 WorkGroup. TechCrunch was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal online and print editions on December 7, 2005, and in the San Jose Mercury News online and print editions on January 15, 2006.

What is the “web 2.0″? There are entire websites dedicated to trying to define it succinctly. Here is Wikipedia’s entry on web 2.0. I think of web 2.0 as the inevitable evolution of the web from a read-mostly medium to a read-write, or two-way medium (think geocities v. weblogs). Web 1.0 was static html pages. Web 2.0 is dynamic and interactive, and more fully exploits network effects. Web2.0 applications leverage key new web application frameworks like Ruby on Rails and AJAX.

We are seeing the separation of content from its old forms. Text is no longer necessarily embedded in a web page, it can be syndicated through RSS or ATOM. Audio is no longer tied to the radio network. It can be Podcast or streamed or downloaded. TV shows are no longer necessarily tied to TV Networks. They can be delivered on demand across IP networks. And so on. These trends throw many business models into question. New companies are being created to leverage these trends. We will profile them here.

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