Web 2.0: 'a read and write mechanism'.

Byline: Matt Marshall

Jan. 15--Michael Arrington, founder and writer of TechCrunch, has become a go-to person for many of the new Silicon Valley Internet companies hoping to strike it big.

Foremost for the companies is to get featured in TechCrunch (www.TechCrunch.com), a blog devoted exclusively to so-called Web 2.0 companies that seek to use the Internet in ways that are more interactive than the previous generation of Internet companies. The new wave of Internet companies also often use more sophisticated Web technologies.

TechCrunch, which launched in June, has more than 20,000 daily visitors, according to Arrington.

Arrington got the idea for the blog while he was doing research for creating Edgeio -- a search engine blog for classified ads posted on blogs -- that he hopes to launch within the next month. In the process, he looked at all types of Internet start-ups because he wanted to track the competition and look at how new, cheap Internet tools such as AJAX and programming languages …