TechCrunch has edged into the syndicated research business, the traditional turf of analyst firms such as Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, Burton Group, et al. The idea behind TechCrunch Research is elegantly simple: package up quarterly reports based on the open source CrunchBase wiki database, sell the reports at economical price points and promote the service across the TechCrunch media network.
What are the implications for analysts and influencer relations managers? Hint: This isn’t about the upfront revenues from selling research reports, or annual subscriptions.
The implication for analysts who cover tech and mobile start-ups is serious new competition for the coveted role as a trusted and well-known expert. TechCrunch Research is promoted across the TechCrunch network — a network that garners 5.5 million unique visitors each month and is wildy popular with VCs, start-ups, early adopters and C-level tech execs. Name an analyst firm that can compete with that kind of audience on this particular market segment. In an attention economy, TechCrunch Research looks like a winner.
There is another implication and it goes far beyond analysts who cover start-ups. TechCrunch Research is the first serious competitor basing paid research subscriptions on open sourced content.
Think about that for a minute. Think about the difference this represents in the cost of acquiring data and the options for making money off of it without sacrificing integrity.
CrunchBase covers close to 19,000 start-ups, plus funding activity, acquisition activity and profiles of some people. Contributors include the TechCrunch staff plus readers and those wanting to be listed. In other words, it’s community based.
Plus, it’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution License [CC-BY], thus it is “open source”. It’s also freely available, however try not to confuse open source with free. “Open source” is strictly about the license rights, “freely available” is strictly about the price tag to the buyer.
Finally, what about analyst relations managers and others involved in influencer relations? First, take a hard look at the TechCrunch demographics to understand how the readership maps to your decision-makers and their influencers.
If it counts, then consider what you’ll need to track: TechCrunch Research reports, the CrunchBase database and coverage and comments impacting reputation across the TechCrunch media network.
Regardless of whether or not your interests center on start-ups, take a good look at CrunchBase. How will you manage relationships with research outfits when their researchers include the community as well as the named staffers? That’s an interesting picture.
And just in case your knee-jerk reaction to any of this is, “Never gonna happen on my watch”, remember this: where TechCrunch goes, others follow. Many others.
For more on TechCrunch’s entry into the research market, see my coverage at Tekrati, TechCrunch Reinforces Entry into Syndicated Research Market“.
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R “Ray” Wang has posted a synopsis of his role as an industry analyst. Ray is with Forrester Research. His clients include tech buyers and tech providers. As a result, his straightforward summary describes the main roles that many analysts play in the tech industry.
I noticed that Ray doesn’t focus on describing his influence. He doesn’t call out his role as an influencer in the enterprise software market. Instead, he describes how he helps clients and how he creates intellectual property for Forrester through his research, analysis, consulting, and reports.
Many important influencers avoid the “influencer” label. It’s not the way they talk about themselves.
They leave such determinations to people like us here at Influencer50, who identify and score influencers on a market by market, client by client basis.
There’s no magic formula for being a great analyst or a great influencer. Ray’s a great role model for both.
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Gartner, being one of the few publicly traded industry analyst firms, notified the SEC that it was reducing headcount by 117 this week. This was followed by SageCircle reports of a reduction at AMR Research. Not surprisingly, the double-serving of downsizing news sent murmurs through the analyst relations and analyst watchers communities. Dennis Howlett, an Enterprise Irregulars and ZDNet blogger, posted a thoughtful perspective, well worth reading.
From my ongoing conversations with AR people over the last few months, I know there’s an assumption that the smaller (and thus ostensibly “more agile”) analyst firms will weather the 2009 economy better than the sector behemoths Gartner, Forrester Research and IDC. I don’t quite share that optimism, based on my conversations with analysts. One of the challenges is that there are so many small analyst shops vying for shrinking budgets.
And that drives me crazy.
The high number of small analyst businesses is a direct result of excessive fracturing within the analyst business. Fracturing has become a chronic problem within the analyst business. It’s epic. The entire sector is out of balance.
The fracturing is compounded by too many small firms staying small, not even attempting to grow into mid-sized firms.
If you’ve followed me even casually, you know that I’m supportive of 1-person and small-team analyst businesses in the world today. For the last 9 years, I’ve been one of the go-to people to validate them and raise their market visibility.
Many small analysts produce research and advice on par with Gartner. I just wish their business vision and execution was on a par with Gartner too.
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