"I should note that Mashable’s traffic is up recently, according to Compete, which is also troubling for TechCrunch. I don’t get that, though. Mashable lately hasn’t been as interesting as ReadWriteWeb, in my view. I think there’s a blog post in there about that. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/centern..." - Robert Scoble

Robert, just curious how you define interesting in this context? I suppose that's probably pending information coming in the blog post you mention. - Jennifer Van Grove

I'm not sure how much trouble they are in. TechCrunch still has enough brand power to last at least several years of drought. Ad rev will take the biggest hit, so I expect Arrington to look for other ways to generate cash, more things like the TC50. - Alex Wilhelm (FF BLOWS)

Techcrunch is still around? Why? - Bob Blunk

But seriously, this will be the year of consolidation. And we need it. Services need to combine into complex websites, instead of just linking together...this includes tech news sources. - Bob Blunk

According to Om, the compete data is in-acurate. http://tinyurl.com/8k5knk - Kiran Patchigolla

Easy answer Robert: Mashable's content has a wider appeal. It's not narrow niche, it mixes the startup reviews with practical how to's and guides etc.... - Duncan Riley

Duncan: which is why you're going for the celebrity news, right? I get that's where most of the audience is. I am just going to follow my heart and talking about Britney Spears just isn't me. - Robert Scoble

I believe if Mashable is increasing in traffic, it's due to their policy of writers frequently doing lists, with a goal of gaming Digg. They've gone lists crazy. - Louis Gray

I commented on the post itself but it's in moderation. Mashable has been disappointing to me for awhile now. They're one of those I dropped from the feed reader. - Karoli

Agree with Karoli. Also the sheer volume of mashable posts on a daily basis caused me to unsub it in my Greader. - Atul Arora

I've been disappointed there, but for different reasons :-p. I can't really speak to all of that publicly, unfortunately, since it's a very interesting conversation. Broadly, though, I can say that if you look back at the Mashable/TC/RWW compete graph several months back, you can see that we all rose and fell in almost perfect parity. I think there's an editorial on Mashable somewhere from March '08 where I talk about the need for early adopters and big brand blogs to think about the mainstream if they .. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

... want to continue to expand. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

"What TechCrunch, GigaOm, et al have going for them is strong brands that should give them the wherewithal to weather the storm." I agree they have a strong brand, but users are looking for quality content. I find breaking news via TC, better writers via GigaOm and better 'how to' with ReadWriteWeb. But all I need is a link from Twitter or FF. The network with best SEO & understands Google Chrome is the one that will be around to celebrate 2010. I would not bet against Arrington. - Julio F ~ @SocialJulio

So often I have found that the worst content gets the most traffic, but since those sites do not go for quality it is short lived and they end up going under a few months later. - MarkCarras

Robert, but having said that we're also mindful you might not want the celeb stuff (from the record it's 11% of traffic) which is why we offer category specific pages and feeds. But sure, in the broader gist, our going wide was inspired given the market now. If we were stuck in a niche we'd be dead by now. - Duncan Riley

mashable ftw just coz hes hot - Rachael Depp

@ rachel I'd tap that - sofarsoShawn

rachael: how do you know mashable is male? But it is pretty hot! - Robert Scoble

Jason: I'm # 24, but I'm not worried. I have a Google tent and can sleep on the beach. - Robert Scoble

Agree with Duncan. You cant be focussed on niche content. Techcrunch has tried to diversify but they are basically in tech related field only (crunchgear, mobilecrunch, enterprise) whereas inquisitr has someting to offer to everyone. They also dont force you to read all the news by having different feeds - Sidharth Dassani

I suspect there are many people who actively dislike TechCrunch - you can generally get the same news and analysis from elsewhere without the attitude. - Andy Davies

every reporter throws in their two cents when reporting, unfortunately TechCrunch frequently throws in a shiny quarter. - Bob Blunk

Andy: what fun would that be? - Robert Scoble