I'm not quite sure why stuff like this bothers me, but it does. Why would I, as a startup, want to attract this much attention for something that offers so little in return? Part of the competitive advantage of being a startup is that you're only known to the people that really matter: your customers. By the time any competitors figure out who you are, you are a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, and a lot wiser.
If you want media exposure, you're much better off picking up the telephone and calling up a newspaper. But this; this is just an easy way for VCs and competitors to keep a close eye on you. That makes me a bit paranoid.
One thing we (CrunchBase) offer is search engine rankings. We rank pretty high on startup keywords (try 'facebook' or 'scribd'), and so we find it's worth 5 minutes a month to keep the data relevant.
StartupIndex has some good stuff going on, particularly the geography features.
We want to create really useful regional pages. That is one of the things about Canada. People don't just pick up and move to one particular city (ie: the valley for tech) -- we tend to stay in our own towns and cities and make a go of it from there., so we want to support that in some cool ways.
If you want media exposure, you're much better off picking up the telephone and calling up a newspaper. But this; this is just an easy way for VCs and competitors to keep a close eye on you. That makes me a bit paranoid.