ZapZap What?

Blain Reinkensmeyer

Posted on Thu 5th Apr, 2007 01:52:16 PM

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Alright, today I have the lucky opportunity to Trash TechCrunch to win a free pass to the Web 2.0 Expo, and what a better way to send the love than by going back to their review of Zapzap.com in June of last year. Just to get your engines rolling, the post was titled, “ZapZap does social podcast directories right”, sorry but the only thing right has been the recent shutting down of the site!

Wait, the Site is Down?

Yup, let’s take a look at Zapzap now, oh wait, we can’t! Head over to their site and you’ll find a nice surprise,

But I thought their features were great already?

Why would they be adding new features when the features they had were so great in the first place? Let’s take a look back at the original TechCrunch post for some insight,

• “While podcast directories are launching fast and furious, this one is particularly nice. Ajax is used just right, digg-type voting is central, synch with iTunes or play on site.”
• “ZapZap does have a full feature set, it looks great and being available in two languages is a smart move.”
• “The little touches here are nice. Each time a podcast you are subscribed to posts a new episode, it receives a “zap” vote. It’s easy to email a link to an episode to someone. Subscribing is simple. Offering a link to subscribe in iTunes instead of trying to compete with iTunes is smart. The functionality is just plain smooth.”

I am confused here? Perhaps Zapzap (really a catchy name too) does have a great traffic base, and I am just plain wrong. Heading over to Alexa.com, I did a quick search for the site, expecting to see a ranking of at least in the top 100,000. I mean come on, we are talking about TECHCRUNCH here people, they are THE PLACE to find out about the latest and greatest startups coming to a computer screen near you (just to clear the slate I actually am a hardcore TC fan, and this is hard to write, please remember we are competing for free prizes here!). Anyway, I pull up the latest alexa.com rank and find, “Not in the top 100,000″, and in fact they are way off the top 100,000, try a traffic rank of 1,235,486! Seven digits of disaster, and even three months ago they were only ranked around 700,000, I think Michael’s TechCrunch picture has more traffic than ZAPZAP.

Predicting the best… or did TC just miss the mark?

I dunno where the “social podcast directories” market is at now, but I have to say TC, you had this one all wrong. Right from the title you lead your readers on a horrible journey of false predictions, thank gosh I wasn’t a zapzap member through this whole zapzap craze, who know’s how I would have reacted to the site closing for feature enhancements!

Regardless of what happens now, I want to point out that ZapZap will be back, and if you check out their homepage, it is very apparent they WILL be, “better than ever”.

Closing Notes and the Truth is that I am obsessed with TechCrunch and read their site everyday. TechCrunch is like church for startups and web junkies, except I visit daily instead of every Sunday. Michael Arrington has to also be one the coolest blog celebrities, and at only 20 if I can have a 100th of a percent of his success, I think my life will be a beautiful place. In the end, this is a contest, and I really want that ticket!