It is not really news that TechCrunch, a pioneer tech-focused blogging platform, is going subscription. Without subscription, TechCrunch has no future. Adjacent to the ruined empire of Yahoo via Oath/Verizon, TechCrunch was walking dead. Simply, because of Facebook and Google, no massively organized news website can survive without subscription unless you are the Guardian UK which knows how to beg for donations. Yet, I give the Guardian three years to join the full party which New York Times, WSJ, FT, WashPost, Bloomberg, and others have since toasted.

I won’t bury the lede. TechCrunch is launching a subscription product called, appropriately and deliciously, Extra Crunch.

Extra Crunch, as it says on the tin, is an additional layer of content, coverage, product and events-based offerings for our most regular and engaged readers. This will consist of articles that go more in-depth on topics in the entrepreneurship and startup universe, of course.

Of course, TechCrunch is not in the league of the entities I have just mentioned: TechCrunch does no serious news investigation which means its cost is low. Yet, that does not mean that it does not have bills to pay in the age where two companies (Google and Facebook) are soaking everyone on digital ads.

TechCrunch will be fine now, with Extra Crunch. It will lose some users but it will start making money since it has more brand equity than The Information, a polished competing tech platform which is subscription-based. I have called this the Diminishing Abundance of Internet where having lesser number of users may improve revenue.

In this videocast, I discuss what I am calling the Law of Diminishing Abundance of Internet. It is a construct that some companies become poorer even when they are growing in numbers of customers reached.That applies to industrial sectors like publishing and telecoms. The lesson here is that risk in any business model must be examined from the lens of this mirage abundance which Internet has provided in some sectors.

The Key Insight from The Announcement

In the Extra Crunch announcement, I picked this main paragraph.

Quietly, and with the gratifying support of management, we’ve been reconfiguring TechCrunch over the past few years to focus on making sure that we’re providing useful, engaging content to readers, not just advertisers. While our audience — you folks — is still one many advertisers would love to reach, that’s their job, not ours. Instead, we wanted to re-align all of our goals around what we saw as the future of sustainable journalism.

What TechCrunch is saying is that with this subscription pivot, it does not care what advertisers will like to see because the readers are paying. The implication is that TechCrunch will create a better product to ensure readers keep paying as they are more sensitive than Google AdSence, an advertising product.

With subscription, TechCrunch will rewire its position in the plot below which explains it all (I’d explained the plot extensively here). By understanding this plot, you will get the idea why TechCrunch is going subscription.

The Challenge Before Ad Agencies

This is very fascinating for people that like this platform: LinkedIn is launching LinkedIn Live, a live video product. For years, the platform where global professionals congregate has refused to focus on video. But that is now history, as LinkedIn pivots to align with the world where Facebook, TikTok , etc have made video a critical part of communication and information exchange.

LinkedIn — the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users globally — says that video is the fastest-growing format on its platform alongside original written work, shared news and other content. Now it’s taking its next step in the medium in earnest.

This week, the company is launching live video, giving people and organizations the ability to broadcast real-time video to select groups, or to the LinkedIn world at large.

Simply, in a world where people do many things at the same time, the easiest way to pass information could be videos. I do think that LinkedIn videos will have more impact in the professional domain world than YouTube. Because professionals are already on LinkedIn, contents created with business and professional ethos will do better on LinkedIn Live.

The focus area seems just right: “conferences, product announcements, Q&As and other events led by influencers and mentors, office hours from a big tech company, earnings calls, graduation and awards ceremonies and more”.  It will expand to include many other areas users will add as LinkedIn Live scales.

I do plan to use LinkedIn Live; we already share many video contents on Tekedia.

This is from a LinkedIn comment on the piece titled – The biggest failure is NOT fixing things that lead to failures.

One of my greatest pieces of wisdom on time management cleverly linked to success & failure! Period! Even greater than my masterpiece “Eat that frog” by Brian Tracy. Thanks, Ndubuisi Ekekwe

As I noted in the piece, I hold this principle that those that come on top are not always the most gifted but those that plan BEST.

“I was a bookworm in university: yes, the too-much reading type because I knew I was not the smartest in class. But I knew if I worked hardest and smartest, I would come on top. That is a principle I apply in life: put extra efforts to mitigate deficiencies in capabilities and quickly learn and advance.”

Yes, the real issue is not the failure but not dealing with elements that keep causing failures.

I wrote a long piece in Harvard Business Review (print) on this, using the engineering process of tracking “noise” and “failures” in inertial sensors while working on an accelerometer for iPhone. In that piece, I explained the core engineering challenge: how do you design for high reliability? Simply, you need to know what causes failures and deal with them, from silicon to production.

As you do that, let it become a positive continuum where even though failures may still occur, you keep reducing the rate of failure until you hit your optimal threshold. You must understand that failure because it is part of success. Measuring failure and why it happens are key components of what matters

The Biggest Failure is NOT Fixing Things that Lead to Failures