TechCrunch 2.0: A New Era of Journalism

Sometimes, you have to start from scratch to make something amazing. Sometimes, you already have most of the ingredients, but you have to do some improvising to make the thing sing. Until today, TechCrunch was in the latter camp. Top reporters who know how to get to the bottom of a story? Check. Must-read news and analysis? Check. Product reviews, dives into the people who matter, savvy analysis to help you distinguish between what’s real versus overhyped regarding AI’s impact? Check, check, check. Less of what isn’t core to the reasons you read us? Check. (We do listen!) Missing for a long time was a sleeker, faster, more immersive interface that made it easier for you to surface all of these things. Today, we’re making that right with a new TechCrunch that features what you already love about TC, plus a lot of wonderful new features, including far better navigation, a fresh color palette, a more modern aesthetic, and – I’m so ecstatic about this – tools to bring the tick-tock of big stories and events to you as they are unfolding. When news breaks, we’ll now be able to break down every second of it for you. It’s been a long time coming. Back in 2018, when TC last saw any kind of refresh, we didn’t have the resources or bandwidth to layer in loads of functionality. The resulting product was almost brutally utilitarian, but as a media company, what you need most is for your stories to go out, and out they went. Still, over time, that system began to falter until, by last year, the site’s back-end architecture was crumbling pretty dramatically behind the scenes. Clearly, it was time for a change. Big thanks are in order to those who got us here. The effort to bring you a better TechCrunch began under the leadership of my friends and former colleagues, former EIC Matthew Panzarino and former GM Joey Hinson, along with many other people at TC both current and past, including our product head, Ted Malong; our director of editorial operations, Henry Pickavet; our audience development director, Morgan Little; our video producer Yashad Kulkarni; our events chief Emma Comeau; our global managing editor, Matt Rosoff; and the design agencies of Turtle Design and Code & Theory.

Thank you, all. I also want to send a shout-out to our incredible sales team, who pushed us for much slicker ad placements and more inventory for our advertisers. Last but not least, many thanks to our parent company, Yahoo, which in every conceivable way supported our efforts to make TechCrunch into a much more effective guide for you. Of course, everything is a process, and we’re not done iterating over here. Over the last year, we’ve made a concerted effort to dive headlong into original reporting and analysis and bring you stories that no one else is telling you. I’m obviously exceedingly biased, but I’m very proud of the work we’re doing to shine a light on stories big and small, from some of the biggest cybersecurity breaches that U.S. companies have seen in 2024, to what went so wildly wrong at the EV company Fisker, to the Andreessen-Arrillaga family’s land and related plans in Vacaville, California. Another way we’re trying to change things up is through our “In Brief” pieces, which flag important – and sometimes just fun — stories that we didn’t chase down ourselves. As the founder of StrictlyVC, a TechCrunch-owned daily email newsletter that goes out to tens of thousands of you, I understand that readers don’t want to be captive to any one outlet or platform anymore; you want the best version of a story, no matter where it is posted. My colleagues here understand the same, and we’re committed to directing you to stories that matter, no matter where they might live. We have a lot more planned for 2025 so stand by, but in the meantime, please let us know what you think of the site. Better yet, tell us in person at Disrupt in a few weeks. We hope you enjoy it, and thank you, truly, for your time and your readership. It means everything.

TechCrunch 2. 0: A New Era of Journalism

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