Top 10 Tech Web Tips

Can PayPerPost Tame the TechCrunch Shrew?

Picture Jump

Over the last 17 months, since PayPerPost launched, TechCrunch has written about PayPerPost 22 times.  Twenty of those twenty-two articles were penned (well we can confirm that they were signed at least) by Michael Arrington.

If you excluded the comment conversations that TechCrunch responds to after they publish a PayPerPost article, TechCrunch does not write about PayPerPost every month.  Every now and then, they skip a 1-3 months and write about something else apparently.  However many months, they write about PayPerPost 2-3 times and two months (last December and this recent November 2007) they wrote 4 articles covering PayPerPost.

If Michael Arrington and the other contributing writers at TechCrunch follow the idealistic belief that you should blog about what you love, and blog about what you know, then they must really know and love PayPerPost.  Today as I pen this article, I notice that TechCrunch reportedly has 607k subscribers.  Not paying subscribers, but people that on average are viewing TechCrunch through a subscription feed service.  These TechCrunch readers must really know and love PayPerPost by now also, otherwise why would they read TechCrunch?

TechCrunch Article Correlation to PayPerPost’s Growth

I wanted to take a look at the growth of PayPerPost’s growth as compared to the coverage that TechCrunch has provided with over a half million subscribers and millions more regular visitors to their website the old fashioned way.

I started my review by looking at PayPerPost’s most recent growth chart, which does not include blogger number growth in November 2007, shortly after the Google attack and during the period when TechCrunch wrote more about PayPerPost than almost any other period in the previous year.  If TechCrunch’s articles do fuel PayPerPost’s growth, one might view TechCrunch’s November 2007 articles as a buffer for PayPerPost against Google’s attacks against bloggers and webmasters both in and outside of PayPerPost’s network.

What Can We Make of This Blogging Love Affair that TechCrunch has with PayPerPost?

For over a year, many people have suggested that Michael Arrington protests PayPerPost’s evil’s too much.  Let’s compare TechCrunch’s coverage of PayPerPost to ReviewMe, a PayPerPost competitor.  TechCrunch seemed to like RevieMe, but only wrote about 2 articles covering ReviewMe with a couple other articles that mentioned ReviewMe as additional a side note.

ReviewMe does not have PayPerPost’s network success nor does it have the financing that PayPerPost grabbed.  Maybe ReviewMe would have been more successful if Michael Arrington had attacked ReviewMe or even started to like PayPerPost and cover it less.

Regardless, as the chart shows, TechCrunch does like to write about PayPerPost.  Michael Arrington is definitely passionate about PayPerPost and provides the Yang to Ted Murphy’s Yin.

Even in alliteration their relationship is reversed

So Can PayPerPost Tame the Michael Arrington Shrew?

The answer is why they ever want to?  PayPerPost is far better off with TechCrunch attacking them.  I’d even suggest that PayPerPost and TechCrunch’s relationship is more akin to a corporate S&M adventure.  Michael Arrington is the brutal mistress with the long StingCrunch whip and PayPerPost lays backs and takes their licks knowing that growth, satisfaction and bliss are just a another torturous whipping away.

Anyone have a great hand at photoshop, email me your submissions of Michael Arrington dudded up as a mistress torturing Ted Murphy, and I’ll add it to this post with full credit.

Update - Michael Arrington Makes it Hurt So Good Pictures

Here’s the first Submissions (feel free to submit more and we’ll see which ones get everyone’s goat)

Picture courtesy of Aahz at Philaahzophy.com.

Picture courtesy of Structured-Ramblings.com

The Classic Black and White

Picture Courtesy of my own poor photoshop skills

Picture Courtesy of a Frog to Kiss