TechCrunch

The new TechCrunch web platform, launched in beta this week, will keep you reading more of what you’ve chosen. And it stands to change how you think of stories and pages. TC's edit direction remains the same — companies, technologies, founders and investors. It’s still about breaking news and smart analysis delivered wryly.

TechCrunch editor-at-large John Biggs spoke with us last week about Tech4Reporters, a tool designed to help busy reporters understand the technology they’re writing about. It’s a tool John funded himself and he gives it away. Why? He wants journalists to have access to tech experts who don’t expect positive publicity in return for their insights.

If you’ve worked less than five years in tech PR, you might not remember Jason Kincaid. The East Bay native was 22 when he walked into founder Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch and onto the tech world stage. Four years later, in 2012, Jason walked away.

In Jan. 2016 Alex Wilhelm left a safe, good job at TechCrunch to build a news staff at Mattermark, a startup selling access to rich data on tech startups and investors. Alex is now at rival Crunchbase on a similar mission: infusing smart analysis with numbers that prove the case.

TechCrunch has launched a new event series, Sessions, designed to dive deeply into a single tech topic. Sessions: Justice takes place Jun. 6 in San Francisco. The second, Sessions: Robotics, follows Jul. 17 in Boston. A Los Angeles-based event (AR/VR?) remains unannounced.

If you’ve had difficulty contributing content to TechCrunch gatekeeper Jon Shieber lately, you’re not alone: readers sent us a lot of “what’s-going-on?” emails in recent days. Even after our own email exchange with Jon, it’s still unclear exactly what is going on.

In the wake of recent layoffs at eWeek and InformationWeek, it’s time to keep a closer eye on the pitch opps that remain across the IT media landscape. To that end, here’s the first of a two-part SWMS IT media spot check. Pitch opps, nuggets and more...

One week ago, TechCrunch showcased 23 lucky startups as part of TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield competition. The winner turned out to be an analytics company that helps gamers play better. The big news for PR -- how do TechCrunch reporters write about cool companies when their bosses say they're cool?

First there was "A/B testing," where a publisher would float two different headlines on their own site and go with the better one. That's still around, but nowadays it's all about "dark testing" on Facebook. TechCrunch does this, as do Refinery29, Fusion and many other titles that publish directly to the FB platform.