TechCrunch UK relaunch and Seedcamp winners

In November 2006 TechCrunch UK and Ireland launched with Sam Sethi as publisher and Mike Butcher as editor bringing much needed focus to the UK tech start up scene.

Just one month later Le Web 3.0 conference organised by Loic le Meur in Paris sparked off a series of 'misunderstandings' that led to Michael Arrington editor of the US parent site effectively shutting down TechCrunch UK. Much heat was generated in the blogosphere about who said what and why.

Following the suspension of TechCrunch UK, Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher worked together at Vecosys, then separated to run their own tech blogs at blognation launched 8 weeks ago (currently in 9 countries) and Mbites respectively.

So to bring things up to date it is refreshing to see Techcrunch UK up and running again with Mike Butcher once more working with Mike Arrington. The important stuff is after all spotlighting new tech in the UK rather than the individuals blogging about it.

This week Techcrunch UK covered Seedcamp and focused on the 6 winners that each received €50k of funding :
First up is Project Playfair, a Scottish project still in development described as "hypertext for numbers";
next is Zemanta, a 'content intelligence platform' from Slovenia;
Kublax is a hyper-encrypted personal finance application syncing all your bank accounts and utilities in one user-friendly place;
Swedish Tablefinder is an online restaurant searching and booking service;
UK-based Buildersite is a trusted marketplace for construction services based on 5% of the project fee;
Lastly is rentmeonline which has been described an eBay for renters.

If anyone has inside info, or experience of using the applications mentioned here share your thoughts on them below.

TechCrunch nuttiness

Regular readers of TechCrunch may remember that editor/owner Mike Arrington has form when April 1st posts are concerned.

Rather than inventing semi-plausible spoof Web 2.0 start up company reviews, cramming in all the requisite buzzwords, this year Arrington appears to have gone for a different approach. CNet reports 'TechCrunch: When April's Fool is no joke' regarding the acquisition of FuckedCompany by TechCrunch.

FuckedCompany started in 2000 by Philip 'Pud' Kaplan and gained a following in the wake of the dotcom bubble burst, when disgruntled employees of failing dotcom start ups, and the recently redundant spilled the beans making for juicy reading.

Arrington who currently deposits failed companies he has written about in the TechCrunch 'Deadpool' cites his rationale for the acquisition of 'FC' as "the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well."

Approximately half the 233 comments on TechCrunch regarding the acquisition believe it to be a joke. Whatever the truth is you have to hand it to Arrington for his ability to continually generate and sustain a high level of interest in his ventures.

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Update: Now confirmed as an April Fools joke to draw attention to how ' Techcrunch is the best-known site announcing new "Web 2.0" companies, while FC chronicled the fall of "Web 1.0." The joke being that Web 2.0 is "officially" over.'

Ning, the social network from Andreessen

Way back in October 2005, Ning launched with an intent to let anyone create social networks without programming skills, for free.

Ning is backed by Marc Andreessen, the 'wunderkind' of the Internet bubble generation and has Gina Bianchini as CEO.

After an several kickings from TechCrunch they at last appear to have ironed out the usabilty issues that got them the earlier bad press with Ning version 2, released on 27th Feb '07.

It was good to see Andreessen and Bianchini interacting with every pertinent comment asked on TechCrunch (161 so far) and being so open. Andreessen was happy to talk about what was happening under the hood and said amongst much other detailed answering that Ning was 90% built in Java. He stresses that Ning is designed to let people customise any aspect of their social network either in the Ning environment or outside using Ning's API's.

Scalablity is often an issue when apps get the TechCrunch spike and aim to go mainstream. Despite a few instances of recently being swamped the concensus is that Ning is coping well and the majority of the feedback is positive.

In my experience it took less than 20 minutes to set up a test social network using Ning without a single glitch. So top marks there for usability. See below, Gina Bianchini giving an impressive demo of Ning, filmed by Robert Scoble.


The Ning business model allows free usage being supported by ads with plenty of premium services available where there is demand.

Reddit's influential 12 year old

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch highlights a recent Wall Street Journal article called “The Wizards of Buzz” which looks at the power of the top users on Digg, Netscape and other “social bookmarking” sites.

One of the top 'influencers' on Reddit, (bought in Ocober 2006 by Condé Nast, turned out to be a 12 year old boy called Adam Fuhrer who lives near Toronto. His father restricts Adam's access to sites such as YouTube, yet Adam has enough time on his hands and nous to reach the top users list on Reddit.

Adam tracks 100 sites searching for news about criminal justice, his local hockey team and software. Recently he focussed on the security vulnerabilities of Vista, Microsoft's much hyped new operating system, gaining approving votes from more than 500 users.

Microsoft having spent five years and an estimated $10bn developing Vista their first operating system since XP, must have concerns that the fruits of their massive investment can be shaped to some extent by someone who no matter how bright they are, is not yet a teenager. It is worth poiting out that Adam is merely linking to established sources such as Robert Vamosi, senior editor at CNet, whose credibility is less of an issue.

One outcome of the Wall Street Journal revealing the identities and ages of some of the top posters to user generated sites, is how regular users of these sites will now feel having been influenced by someone eight years below the lower end of the typical reddit/digg user demographic of 20-30 years old.