From the comments:

"that team could build very similar functionality using free or open source projects"

Are baseball teams really in the business of hiring a bunch of programmers to write a twitter clone? Seems like paying this company is much cheaper and much more likely to be successful.

A team could easily hire someone to write a twitter hashtag aggregator widget though...

I'd much rather if the FanChatters (and other YC groups) would just share what they were working on via the site. Using TechCrunch as a middle man in exchange for perceived authority is lame, and I think HN would develop a much stronger community and culture if we all just shared what we were working on directly and asked each other for help.

I think it's a side effect that the announcements happen via TechCrunch. I think the basic flow is this:

- Media coverage of YC companies tend to be posted to news.yc

- If TechCrunch will cover your launch, that's good for a company's visibility

- Thus, TechCrunch stories about YC companies launching end up on news.yc

They do it for the publicity, not the authority. Only a small minority of people read HN. (And let's hope it stays that way.)

I understand the value of TechCrunch to get publicity with the general (tech) public. I just meant that within HN, I think sharing directly with each other would create a stronger community.

Cool, sounds very similar to the project abossy and I worked on: www.twitterbowl2009.com

Great job, guys, congrats on the launch!

Congratulations guys, nice work!

Congrats on the launch. As a passionate sports follower I would love to use fanchatter for my fav sports- F1 and Football.

Congrats dudes!