A similar dynamic is true of Kickstarter. Since its launch in 2009, the crowdfunding site has been the spot where 76,000 projects have raised money and more than $1 billion has been pledged. Smashing successes on the funding platform include the original Pebble smartwatch and virtual reality goggles from Oculus, the company that Facebook acquired this year for $2 billion.  Like Pinterest, Kickstarter gets more press for how people are using the platform than for how the company itself is performing. In fact, Kickstarter wasn't even among the top 10 most covered start-ups this year, despite how frequently it's name came up in stories.  AirPR Co-founder and CEO Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer equates such high mentions to the New York Stock Exchange in the context of publicly listed companies on the trading platform. "In addition to traditional press about the NYSE, half the time a public company is mentioned, the publication mentions the NYSE and the ticker symbol," said Fouladgar-Mercer.  The blogging site Medium has gotten a healthy dose of mentions because it's led by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. But it's also getting citations because it's an increasingly popular publishing platform for prominent people including best-selling author Gary Vaynerchuk and new media guru Jeff Jarvis.  10 tech start-ups that got the most company coverage in 2014  Turning to which start-up was the subject of deeper coverage and the highest number of stories—surprise!—the winner was Uber. Actually, this will be a surprise to nobody, in tech at least. The ridesharing app has been all over the news this year for its mammoth fundraising and valuation (now at $40 billion), its hostile encounters with governments, regulators and taxi groups across the world and its aggressive tactics in taking on competitors, using consumer data.  Uber's main competitor, Lyft, was ninth on the list. According to AirPR's data, Uber received quadruple the coverage of Lyft for most of the year, but in recent months the ratio has been more like 8-to-1.  Read MoreUber CEO indicted in South Korea  Second to Uber was Dropbox, the cloud file-sharing and collaboration company that was valued at $10 billion in early 2014. Dropbox has consistently been a hot topic for the past four years or so, but got a healthy dose of substantial ink in the middle of 2014, after launching a new product to store and share photos and videos.  At the same time, the company announced that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was joining its board of directors.  Etsy, the marketplace for homemade goods, was third, followed by payments company Square. Snapchat, the wildly popular app for sending disappearing messages and photos, rounded out the top five.
As 2014 wraps up, we can all agree on this: It was a wild year for start-ups. CNBC.com looked to see which ones got the most coverage.