Last year, self-identified kingmakers Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis put together a conference with a gimmick: They selected 40 Web 2.0-ish startups to make their onstage debuts, and kept the list of the chosen "TechCrunch40" secret until showtime. Looking back at that list, I can't say I'm stoked to see this year's expanded roster of 50 companies. Each one will be making its public launch in a down market, on the same day as 49 other startups. So don't worry, guys, I won't be sniffing around the San Francisco Design Center Concourse trying to get the secret list this year. We'll let GigaOm have this one.

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