[image credit:laffy4k]

Today BusinessWeek and GigaOM formed a syndication partnership.  BW will be featuring content from Om Malik’s blog network every Monday.  After hearing about this, I realized that traditional media companies need blogs like us to keep them looking cool & hip.

This hypothesis is apparent when Guardian Media, a British media company acquired paidContent for over $30 million last week.  Another example is that the Washington Post inked deals with paidContent and TechCrunch to syndicate their content.  Video blogger, Loren Feldman produces videos for CNET (now owned by CBS) on a regular basis.  And then The New York Times bought out the Freakonomics blog in August 2007.

Are traditional media companies having a hard time finding talented journalists and bloggers themselves to provide the same unique content as us?  Blogging isn’t rocket science.  I’m just blogging to make money to power my own startup ideas, pay the office rent, and learn more about the industry.  What are your thoughts?  Why does traditional media need us?

TechCrunch and Mashable are probably the two strongest names in technology news blogging today.  Both companies serve as a benchmark for many rising star technology blogs such as Pulse 2.0.  Everyday I read both blogs.  The best part of both blogs was that they each had their own style, niche & strategy that propelled them to where they are today.  But today something is happening.

Notice something in the arrows above?  Both companies used almost the same exact article title.  They’re killing each other’s originality.  Let me get into this later.  Right now I’ll tell you about the previous strategies versus the present of Mashable and TechCrunch.

Mashable’s Perceived Previous Strategy
When Mashable first started, Pete Cashmore focused solely on writing about MySpace and other social networks.  One of Cashmore’s first articles that became instantly popular was, “If You Don’t Have A MySpace, You’re a Lametard.“ 

It was a unique approach to blogging, but it worked.  Like many other entrepreneurs, Cashmore never graduated college, but he found his groove and it worked for him.  When Cashmore offered Pulse 2.0 to write for Mashable in 2006 and we said no, it was because we wanted to see how much P2 would grow.  There was mutual respect in doing that and Cashmore is a great guy. Since then P2 worked with Mashable to promote the Open Web Awards.

Mashable’s Perceived Current Strategy
Mass blog post production.  Now Mashable writes about everything happening on the Internet.  They have slipped away from their core focus from strictly social network news.  For example, one of their last articles was: ABC Launching Upgraded Video Player For Fall Season.  This has nothing to do with social networking news. 

TechCrunch’s Perceived Previous Strategy
When TechCrunch first started growing, Arrington was writing a smaller number of articles per day, but he made sure that it focused on only web start-ups and it was higher in quality.  I looked at Techcrunch’s archives from February 2006 and noticed that Michael Arrington only wrote about 61 articles that month.  All of those articles focused on startups.  When you thought of any kind of web startups, you thought of TechCrunch. 

TechCrunch’s Perceived Current Strategy:
Mass blog post production.  Within the last 22 days, TechCrunch has published over 113 articles about everything happenng on the Internet.  In the rare instances where TechCrunch writes about a startup today, it gets mixed in with tons of information that other blogs and publications have already written.  TechCrunch is shifting away from their core competency.

Consequence:
The above screen shots are the results of what happens when you attempt to be something that you are not.  You try to replicate a model to the point where you beging to think exactly the same as the other. 

Pulse 2.0 Strategy
Given the constructive criticism I’m giving to both Mashable and TechCrunch, you may ask what makes Pulse 2.0 unique from the other tech blogs?  Pulse 2.0 focuses on news, startups, social networks, funding, and whatever we feel like adding.  If I see a funny video clip created by 1938 Media, I’ll post it.  If Shan can prove that 6 volt batteries do not contain 4 AA batteries in it, he’ll publish that.  Pulse 2.0 is a thinktank. 

If you have any feedback for our current business model, I’d be happy to hear about it.

The rumor mill for a Bebo acquisition is flooding again.  TechCrunch announced today that Bebo was acquired for a rumored $1 billion.  “A high level source has told us that Bebo has been in discussions via their investment bank, Allen & Co., with a number of potential buyers, and says that the company signed a deal on Monday to be acquired,” wrote TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington.

Arrington also followed up by saying that the second largest UK-based social network either actually signed the deal or sent out wrong messages about it.  But given the reputation of their investment bank, the latter seems unlikely.

The buyer is unknown, but there are a lot of guesses out there: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, CBS, Viacom, Comcast, etc.  Who is your guess?  My guess is that it wasn’t Microsoft wasn’t it since they already plugged $240 million into Facebook.  Google already has Orkut, but Bebo could be their way of penetrating the European market.  Viacom could use Bebo as a means of connecting MTV watchers.   I doubt Comcast would spend $1 billion when their market cap is about $52 billion.  Yahoo! is acquiring a few companies here and there, but judging by their layoffs from earlier today, they don’t want to spend such a large amount right now.

Google seems like the most likely buyer.  Google could somehow integrate Orkut, YouTube, and Bebo together.  And that would be interesting.

Aaron Patzer had a vision in November 2005.  When using Quicken for his own personal accounting, Aaron realized that he was running through a lot of tedious work.  Patzer then started developing Mint, a Web 2.0 tool that is used for all the different forms of money management.

Today, Mint is backed by First Round Capital and previous executives from eBay, Google, Charles Schwab, and Reuters.  Josh Kopelman became a Mint Board of Director after investing into the company.  Kopelman is the founder of Half.com, which eBay bought in June 2000 for $318 million.  Mint’s current funding is $5 million.

As of tonight, Mint has another award to list as an accomplishment: the TechCrunch40 Conference 2007 winner.  The personal finance application will take home $50,000 as an award.

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Former TechCrunch UK writer, Sam Sethi is making some ambitious moves. Sethi is starting a technology blog that does not focus on U.S. companies and is called Blognation. Blognation^[1] will be focusing on web companies that are largely based in the European and Asian continent.

The problem with the idea of focusing on European website companies is that every web company has interests in making an impression in Silicon Valley. This is where practically all the venture capital firms are and where a majority of the web company acqusitions take place.

Below is a video interview of Sam Sethi talking about the launch of Blognation:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=uMlUCoawfgg[/youtube]

Blognation has about 16 writers and include technologies that revolve on the web, mobile technologies, and enterprise software. Blognation also lists events that will take place in the aforementioned locations. The chronological upcoming events on Blognation right now are listed all the way till March 17, 2008.

In regards to Sam Sethi’s firing from TechCrunch UK, Michael Arrington wrote in his personal blog^[2]:
“Sam and I exchanged words this morning and I said he basically fired himself with that second to last post promoting his events. But nothing had been publicized and we certainly could have discussed a work around, public apology, retraction, etc. But the next thing I knew he’d posted on the blog about his dismissal. Until that happened, everything was reversible. After he took that step, the situation was no longer able to be resolved.”

Supposedly, Blognation has already raised funding from undisclosed investors. If or when Michael Arrington brings back TechCrunch UK, he may have found himself making a former employee into a rival. The intensity of rivalry could be very interesting. Arrington is pretty ruthless when it comes to competition.

[1] Blognation
[2] CrunchNotes: Putting TechCrunch UK On Hold

The TechCrunch 20 Conference website is officially live.  Sequoia Capital is sponsoring the event.  Jason Calacani and Michael Arrington are teaming up for the event.

If you’re a start-up and feel that you are ready to pitch an idea to a group of well-connected individuals such as Mark Cuban, Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Om Malik, Chris Anderson, and Mike Arrington himself, then I suggest registering for the event.

The creation of this event was inspired by the fact that to present your start-up at the DEMO conference, it costs $15,000.  For more details, click here.

Hilary Duff, popstar/actress has announced that her pet Chihuahua, Lola now has a profile on niche social network, Dogster.com.

Dogster.com was founded by Ted Rheingold in San Francisco around January 2004. Dogster rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the out-of-business niche pet sector websites such as Pets.com. Now the website has over 275,000 accounts and 350,000 photos. Advertisers such as Disney and Holiday Inn have also targetted Dogster for promotion.

“Lola is the best, and she has such a great personality. I am excited that she is part of the Dogster community so people will get to know her, and she’ll be able to get to know all the other top dogs out there,” Duff said.

Dogster has raised $1 million in funding by several angel investors including Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch.

Duff’s dog has been featured on many magazines, made an appearance on David Letterman, and even has a character featured on Electronic Arts’ The Sims 2: Pet Edition.

Lola Duff’s profile is available at http://www.dogster.com/dogs/489342. Duff’s participation may just set off a trend for other celebrity dog owners to create profiles. Although I highly doubt Britney Spears and Paris Hilton will do the same since they are the World’s Worst Celebrity Dog Owner according to Hollywood Dog and New York Dog magazines.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CS8sItnhus[/youtube]

TechCrunch blogger, Michael Arrington announced that he was one of the investors in the social networking website for dog lovers, Dogster and its sister site, Catster. Dogster attained a round of $1 million in funding last week and is in the top 10,000 most visited websites according to Alexa.

Arrington discussed in a TechCrunch blog post that the reason why he chose to invest in Dogster, even though Dogster’s founder, Ted Rheingold does not own a pet, was because the founders were able to manage operating costs efficiently and Dogster was profitable within 2 years of its inception. Another reason why Arrington invested in Dogster was because Michael (Mukesh) Parekh joined Dogster’s Board of Directors.

Mukesh is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs and was a lead research analyst for Yahoo! and eBay’s intial public offerings (IPOs). Mukesh also has a blog called Michael Parekh on IT.

Clearly this is a smart investment by Arrington as the entrepreneurs behind Dogster and Dogster’s new management team have a solid technical background and have attracted big name advertisers. If you have a dog, I highly suggested logging onto Dogster and joining the community.