AOL nabs TechCrunch

September 28, 2010 • Topics: , ,

Wow. AOL buys TechCrunch and the rumors are afloat. Michael Arrington will stick around for 3 years, but how will this affect his work and the site overall? Quite a bit, I wager.

  • Franky

    AOL will use the acquisition to boost some of the AOLNews properties. Arrington loves expanding his influence and his love for drama will be a great traffic generator.

    The main thing though are the brand (and possibly some of the minor Crunch assets) but most of all Heather and Erick. Long term Mike is no asset for any brand because too much focused on drama. Remember the backlash there has been on ‘typical blogosphere drama writing style’ entries on TC syndicated content in NYT and WaPo?

    Let’s just hope all TC contributors will receive a favourable and long term deal, and not end up on the AOL pile of thanked contributors. After all, AOL(News) doesn’t really need TC and it is rather disappointing that they didn’t manage to position AOLNews better against the bigger tech ‘bloggers’/properties.

  • http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

    Good points. Question is, how motivated will Arrington be when he’s not running his baby anymore? I know, selling a site and signing a paper to go along for the ride often means that you loose focus, the edge, or whatever. Will he degrade to weekly snarky columns in bloggish style, the drama sort of thing you mention?

    And what good can come of this from AOL? How does TechCrunch really fit into their network? To me they are really far from the properties today, which means that there is a risk that they want to make TechCrunch more streamlined and mainstream. Might work, but I doubt it, too much history.

    This could be the break the TC competition have been waiting for!

  • Franky

    Good points, Thord.

    here ‘s my take on them:
    Does TC fit into AOL? Yes, definitely. AOLNews has been publishing (tech) content which could arguably compete with Ingram’s content but without the A-lister profile.

    Yes, TC will become more streamlined, The brand+SEO mix will help AOLNews (content). I do think that the TC network fits within AOL(News), just look at how the TC network has expanded over last two years but it will be a major feat to keep all writers on board.
    Th expansion of TC should be taken as a sign of how Mike wants to expand into other markets, such as finance, and AOL can provide Mike a much better platform than he could create himself.

    As for Mike, I don’t think he will have any quota and will just publish whenever he feels like. Similar to JC when he sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL. But Mike probably has received a whitecard for all his conferences and probably hyperlocal events as well, to compete with Cashmore. That alone will keep Mike motivated: the combination of Arrington and AOL should bring even more big profilers to the next Disrupt and Carol B. could not get away anymore with calling TC a small website.

    This will not break th competition at all, instead it will open the space for new players again!

  • http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

    I think you misunderstood the break thing, since I totally agree: This is the break the competition have been waiting for, because streamlined means non-hardcore anymore. Which, if we’re really honest, probably is what TC’s been for some time.

    It would be interesting to hear about Arrington’s agenda, but he probably can’t talk very much about it, other than the official yadayada stuff so we’ll just have to wait and see how everything pans out. I doubt he’ll stay a second more than the contract stipulates, although I hope that’s not the case for his sake.

    The network is a decent fit, some overlapping with CrunchGear but otherwise fine. Some of the content, like the drama posts as you call them, work less well with AOL’s current offerings.

  • Franky

    Yes, I agree. This could be that ‘break’ but in all honesty, TC already was the ‘Big Blue Monster’ analogue to GapingVoid’s MSFT caricature.

    All three (TC, Mashable and RWW) long have stopped speaking with startups already. Most of their content is not startup focused anymore and has turned into main stream media since at least Duncan leaving TC.

  • http://tdhedengren.com Thord Daniel Hedengren

    That is true, content have shifted towards just telling the story about new web services and stuff like that. It’s a shame, more startup culture to the people!

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