Difference between Techcrunch and Mashable
When searching for social media news, updates, tips, and anything related to the World Wide Web, there’s a good chance you’ll come across two weblogs, Techcrunch and Mashable. Both sites are head-and-head in competition, starting out at about the same time in July 2005. It would certainly be interesting to see where these two are now headed to.
Features/Site Interface
Techcrunch’s interface is well organized and comes with several value-added features that are sure to delight the users. For instance, one can find company profiles with relevant info and reviews next to the company’s name, and there are more widgets at the bottom of each post providing more info about that certain company. There are many categories of topics and many articles under each topic. However, the ads showing on the site are quite disturbing.
Mashable sports a user-friendly interface, too, with different channels. Topics are well-organized and categorized accordingly. Although there are ads that show up in the site, they are not as disturbing or off-topic, unlike those that you see in the Techcrunch website. Moreover, one would certainly like the appearance of the Blippr emoticon after the brand name to show how people feel about that particular brand. Mashable also comes with a “drop here” Meebo feature allowing you to share articles on a number of social platforms with ease. Below each post, one can find related articles which are presented well and very organized.
Quality of Content
TechCrunch seems to focus more on the quality of its articles, rather than quantity. Their articles are longer and more detailed, and as it appears, very well researched, too. Mashable has lots of solid content, particularly when it comes to posting tips and articles.
Popularity
In terms of popularity, TechCrunch’s Alexa traffic rank worldwide is 548 while that of Mashable is 557. However, Mashable continues to gain more followers, even edging past Techcrunch in terms of unique visitors in May 2009 (a first for Mashable), with 2.89 M unique visitors as against 1.86 M for TechCrunch. This lead increased during the month of June with 2.099 M unique visitors for Mashable and only 2.033 M visitors for TechCrunch.
TechCrunch boasts of 2.9 M RSS subscribers, while Mashable has only came up with 288,000. However, when it comes to Twitter followers, Mashable has 1.2 M, while Techcrunch has only a little more than a million.
Summary
It would be very difficult to make just one choice. Needless to say, the following factors would help you make the right decision:
- Site interface – Techcrunch’s site is more organized, but ads tend to be a bit disturbing; Mashable’s site is more interactive, more engaging to navigate your way in and out of. It has ads that are more relevant to the site’s content.
- Quality of content – In terms of quality, Techcrunch’s articles are longer, more detailed, and well-researched.
- Popularity – The Alexa Traffic Rank for Techcrunch is 548, and 557 for Mashable. Techcrunch also has more RSS subscribers than Mashable, but Mashable has more Twitter followers than Techcrunch.
