With the release of CrunchGear, the latest in a stream of blogs from Michael Arrington’s Crunch network, it would seem that originality may be dead. Darren at BlogRepublic asks the same question:
Even the great Michael Arrington, the undisputed king of rapid blog growth, has show an untter lack of imagination with his newest entry CrunchGear. This is “yet another gadget blogâ€, right down to its’ typical “big ass gadget picture†and the requisite Adsense engulfing the article. Say it ain’t so, Mike. Employing people in order to run Adsense ads is bound to have a burn rate, at least for awhile.
So, why does a copycat blog like CrunchGear have such rampant success in the first day? It already has over 530 subscribers to it’s feeds. Their stats aren’t published that I know of, but I’m sure that they are already more impressive than about 80% of the blogs that have been around for months and years.
The answer boils down to market exposure. The success of TechCrunch, the original Crunch blog, has garnered Michael Arrington enough eyes that he can divert them at will. He’s become a respected authority on Web2.0, so why can’t he(or his cohorts) become respected authorities on gadgets? Or mobiles? Or jobs? The answer is that he can indeed. Not necessarily because he is an authority on those subjects, but because a percentage of his everyday readers are uber-loyal. They border on the Apple loyalists. In short, the newest Crunch network addition is immediately popular because Michael said so.
Now, I’m not trying to be overly snarky here. I certainly believe that the crew at CrunchGear has some authority on the subject. And they certainly will have something unique to add to the genre. However, the A-list celebrity nature of the Crunch network blogs allows them to be less original than the average joe simply because of the eyes that they already garner.
It could also be noted that there are millions of eyes to go around and none of these blogs garner a majority of them, but as more and more of these copycat blogs appear, the eyes become thinner and thinner. Until of course, one gets the lead and some of the others start dropping off. Again, blogs like CrunchGear get a head start over the unknown startup. The advantages of the A-list return.
Technorati Tags: Crunch network, CrunchGear, TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, Blog Republic
About Shane Ede
[…] I saw this post (referenced here as well, albeit in a much lighter tone): Even the great Michael Arrington, the undisputed king of rapid blog growth, has show an untter lack of imagination with his newest entry CrunchGear. This is “yet another gadget blog”, right down to its’ typical “big ass gadget picture” and the requisite Adsense engulfing the article. Say it ain’t so, Mike. Employing people in order to run Adsense ads is bound to have a burn rate, at least for awhile. […]