Kernel Magazine

They're not exactly known for their ethical business practices.

“[Samsung’s] long-standing policy prohibits union organising [and has] attracted critical attention. Samsung’s overall corporate structure centralises the policy-making that governs the activities of its vast network of subsidiary corporations.

Samsung is a “chaebol” – one of the family-run conglomerates that dominate South Korean society. Almost Mafia-like in their obsessive secrecy and reach, chaebols have influence in most markets and industries in the country and wield huge political influence. They have also not been shy of using underhand methods to maintain their position. [...]

[Secretly recorded conversations] revealed that Haksoo Lee (vice-chairman of the Samsung Group) and Hong (Korean ambassador to the US and then publisher of the Joongang Daily) were planning to deliver upwards of 3 billion won – around £2 million – to presidential candidates ahead of South Korea’s elections. [...]

Samsung owns Joongang Daily… it also has unprecedented power over journalism because it has the economic power to buy advertising space and time. “It is hard to criticise Samsung as an individual journalist. It is considered insane.” [...]

In 2008, the current Samsung chairman, Lee Kun-Hee, stepped down after his house and offices were raided and a police investigation began into claims that the corporation was maintaining a slush fund to bribe court officials and politicians. Found guilty of financial wrongdoing and…

I think it's important to note the OP's beef is apparently with TechCrunch EU, not with the "US" version of TechCrunch we all know and love/loathe.

As far as I know, eu.techcrunch.com is magnitudes smaller than techcrunch.com.

EDIT: Looks like they folded eu.techcrunch.com into the main site at some point (after writing about eNovella, before writing about Jottify?).

eNovella post on TechCrunch: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/enovella-gives-aspiring-authors-and-poets-somewhere-to-share/

Jottify post on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/07/techcrunch-tv-three-startup-pitches-from-the-future-of-web-apps-conference/

Other reasons that could explain the low referral traffic: the eNovella post was very brief (and, again, on the European site at the time) while the Jottify mention was literally only one sentence in a brief post that also included 2 other startups.

EDIT2: Just noticed the author of the TechCrunch post on eNovella, Milo Yiannopoulos, is now the Editor-in-Chief of the OP site, "The Kernel" (and author of the 'editor's pick' article at the top of the right sidebar).

Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's a hatchet job on his former employer. Either way, I think it should merit a disclosure in the OP's article, no?

http://www.kernelmag.com/editorial-staff/

What about a simple porter analysis of Apple, still in a strong position, but not as strong as several years ago.

Power of New Entrants: Xiaomi

Power of Substitutes: Google Glass

Power of Customers: demand for low cost iphone

Power of Suppliers: Moving back to US manufacturing?

Power of Competitors: All the big tech companies.

Also a fantastic article on Disruption from The Kernal. Key insight is that companies are very aware of disruption considering it irresponsible for any board of a large technology incumbent not to have read 'Innovator's Dilemna.'

THE STORY WE ALL KNOW
"Kodak built film cameras, and made money on the film, the classic “Gillette” business model, and was so obsessed with this profit stream that it completely missed the tidal wave of digital photography and the internet"

INTERESTING ADDITION
"The next step for digital photography wasn’t the internet. It was point-and-shoots. Canon and Fujitsu. Kodak was so focused on disrupting itself and not falling into the trap of the innovator’s dilemma that it lost a grip on its core business. It turned out that in order to remain relevant in the internet age, it just had to make good cameras."

http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/analysis/4696/the-man-who-got-it-too-much/

"Elsevier tried to sneak in legislation through lobbying – the so-called Research Works Act – that was to undo the National Institute of Health’s Open Access mandate and therefore would have prevented public access to millions of bio-medical research papers. They had to pull back after outrage and boycotts from the academic community.

Our vision is to crack this open by, first of all, encouraging academics to be aware of their rights, be aware of the lobbying that is going on, and also by enabling them to post their own publications over which they retain copyright, from their Mendeley profiles. A ton of papers have been made available by Mendeley in this way, by academics uploading their own papers. So, that’s our attempt at making content more accessible and science more open."

Quoted from the founder in an interview just a few months ago (17 September 2012). Speaks for itself really.

http://www.kernelmag.com/features/qa/3322/cracking-open-science/

They have their work cut out for them indeed, but it's of there own making. They should have been looking at systemic issues when the Minecraft founder couldn't get access to his account for months, when their customer service advised someone to destroy a perfectly good violin due to "fraud", apparently mass payment doesn't exist even when it does [1],
numerous reviews in magazines such as PC World [2] and Kernel Magazine [3], and an entire website devoted to how bad they are was established from pissed off customers [4].

PayPal are in big trouble. It's going to take more than platitudes to get them out of it!

1. http://christianowens.com/post/15771850658/my-recent-experience-with-paypal-customer-service

2. http://www.pcworld.com/article/101525/consumer_alert_paypals_problems.html

3. http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/2978/paypal-still-sucks/

4. http://www.paypalsucks.com/

There's a great three part series[1][2] (well, parts one and two are great) at the Kernel magazine on recruiters as well as an expose on the top recruiting scams[3].

[1] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2401/tech-recruiters-part-i-desperate-times/

[2] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2403/tech-recruiters-part-ii-fear-and-loathing/

[3] - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/2404/the-10-sleaziest-tech-recruiter-scams/