More About Why You Should Be Reading TechCrunch

If you're in marketing and you need more proof about why you should be reading TechCrunch, just take a look at this sampling of posts from this morning:

Lehman’s Online U.S. Advertising Forecast: Another $20 Billion In Growth By 2012 And Online Video Takes Off
I think that one of the interesting numbers here is the Online Video growth. If you try to balance the concepts that Seth Godin rolls up in Meatball Sundae and the idea of traditional commercials being "interrupting" spam, I think that video is still trying to find the right path into permission. This is going to be an interesting trend to follow and understand -- is this growth because traditional marketing is dipping their respective toes in the water or because there is increasing traction.

The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging
Here's another great post on the challenges facing traditional outbound marketing venues in the face of Web 2.0. As many traditional marketers try to find the right path in the "New Media" world, many struggle with how to use these concepts, what they mean, etc. Some may be read this post as "Yet Another Blogger Posts About How Important Blogging Is," but it really is much bigger than that. Anyway, I recommend that you dig into this one!

VC Firm Subpoenas TheFunded For Negative Review
This is a great post, but it may help you to have a little of the backstory on this one. Like many businesses where you the customer have operated without enough vision of the entire market, the market for venture capital has traditionally been shrouded with secret term sheets and a small, close-knit, exclusive community. As an entrepreneur, you had limited access to information that might help you differentiate between helpful venture partners and high-end loan sharks. TheFunded is a VC review site that was created to help in comparing and ranking VC firms. Some of the reviewed firms don't like this visibility -- welcome to Web 2.0. This is going to be an interesting story to follow -- you should be able to keep up with it on Techcrunch.

The other key take-away from this is, if there isn't review site for your specific business or industry already, consider how people would review your business -- are you doing business like reviews matter?