The Next Web

Move over Techcrunch, Mashable is now Bigger than you…

By Boris
July 1, 2009
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Picture 1Yes, it is true. According to Compete, Mashable now has more unique visitors than Techcrunch. Techcrunch also seems to have grown ‘only’ 43% since last year where Mashable has grown 127%.

Three times as much growth and more unique visitors? Wow.

To me, that knowledge is similar to finding out that your little brother now makes more money than you. I mean, Pete Cashmore is 16, right? Okay, maybe 23. Or was that last year?

Either way, Techcrunch, with Michael Arrington at the helm, was THE big and powerful Techblog. Mashable was just this cute blog by a kid from the UK that was doing pretty well. Not bigger than Techcrunch, right!? When the hell did that happen?

According to Compete it happened in May. At the end of May Mashable came in at an estimated 1,899,380 pageviews versus Techcrunch’s 1,862,612 views. A difference of only 36,768 pageviews. But hey, it IS more.

Now before you point out that Compete is only guestimating and that Techcrunch probably has more traffic: sure, Compete might be off. But they are more likely underguessing Mashable’s traffic than the other way around. Mashable has always had a more global focus and, being founded in Scotland, strong ties to Europe. Compete tends to miss out on a lot of international traffic. The numbers for Mashable might even be higher. Compete will publish its numbers for June somewhere this week so then we will know whether Mashable grew even more or if this was just a fluke.

Traffic isn’t everything of course. Techcrunch probably has a lot more influence and reach. They still beat Mashable in RSS readers by a very large margin: 271k VS 3,3 million for Techcrunch. More than 10 times as much!

The king isn’t dead yet, but Mashable is clearly aiming for the throne, and growing bigger and stronger every day.

 

  • I think Mashable's growth can for a large part be explained by traffic from twitter. Mashable does have more followers. I don't have the data but think Mashable's articles get retweeted more.

    For more on twitter passed links check Fred Wilson's presentation at 140conf (Dutch): http://www.strategieforum.nl/2009/verschuiving-...
  • Yeah, we get more traffic from Twitter nowadays than from any other source. Unless we are on the Digg front page of course.
  • Tols
    Where do those RSS stats come from? Compete?
  • No, from Techcrunch and Mashable. They both display them on their front page...
  • I think Mashable's secret is they write a lot of their posts specifically for Google. A lot of their posts recently have been basic tutorials for newbies with titles that people are likely to search for. It's working too as these posts rank quite well in Google. The risk of course is that they will overdo it and alienate their core audience of geeks who don't want to read yet another tutorial on how to get started with twitter or an explanation on using hash tags.
  • True. Although these tutorial often have at least one tidbit of information even the geeks didn't know. :-)
  • the visitors is almost the same, no big difference, so it's meaningless.
  • Yeah, just like at the Olympics right? Only a second difference is meaningless. Oh right, that is the difference between world fame and nothing?

    Mashable used to be Techcrunch's little cousin. Now it is an equal. That sure as hell is significant.
  • I am not surprised given the quality of content on Mashable. I agree with @josh that they're generating a lot of SE-friendly content and that combined with their solid focus on social media (which shockingly enough is still hot) doesn't hurt either.
  • I get a feeling that their TweetMeme button get them serious traffic too. Their posts are among the most retweeted. I wonder what would happen if Techcrunch would add the TweetMeme button...
  • Boris you seem to have an obsession with web sites beating TechCrunch. Maybe you should take a chill pill? :-)

    If you actually read Mashable, you'd realise that many of their posts rip off other blogs. There is increasingly less original reporting. And they don't really link back much.

    My apologies, but your view that it is more "European" made me laugh out loud. Pete started Mashable in his bedroom in Scotland but aimed it solely at the US. He lived US hours for about 2 years. That was very smart. But the amount of European "coverage" on it is laughable.

    Lastly, even if Mashable overtakes TechCrunch, it doesn't really matter. The core, valuable audience is on TechCrunch because it breaks real news. Mashable's audience may be healthy in size but the quality of it is degrading into teenage social media obsessives who want to learn how to make more friends on Facebook/Twitter - this is less valuable to advertisers. It's like thinking Bebo is a valuable advertising platform.
  • An obsession? Well, I do look up to Techcrunch if that is what you mean. But I seriously don't remember having written about sites beating Techcrunch before. What posts were you referring too?

    As I said in the post; pageviews isn't everything. The point I made was that Mashable used to be Techcrunch’s little cousin, in a different league. But now they ARE catching up. That surprised me and that's why I mentioned it.

    Regarding Mashable not linking back: Mashable frequently links to Techcrunch (at least 2 times a week = my guess) and other blogs but Techcrunch NEVER links to Mashable. Search Techcrunch and you will see that you mentioned them maybe 4 times since 2005. I know you break more news, but Mashable doesn't do that bad here either, yet you always ignore them.
  • Interesting post, I have always wondered how those two compared in numbers.
    Its obviously a slightly different audience in some ways, although I noticed Techcrunch (US one) has broadened their coverage over the past year or so. Startup news use to dominate, and now they branch out across the tech world.
    Which is good.

    Haven't been a Mashable reader for as long, but I find a lot of their stuff is repeat posts / irrelevant to tech or social media.

    What about the other tech blogs, are there no others competing for such honours ? or is no 3 a distant no 3 ?
  • I've noticed that Mashable gets so many more retweets per post.
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