Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
Mike Arrington: Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here
Image via WikipediaMike Arrington was recently in news for days for what was termed Angelgate. Now he is in news for selling TechCrunch to AOL. Arrington turned TechCrunch into the leading tech blog in the world. That is no small achievement. He has personally remained controversial. He makes it sound like that is the nature of the job. I still don't know how much TechCrunch was sold for, but it might be close to $40 million. Looks like Arrington finally, finally became a dot com millionaire. Quoting from this article below might be relevant at this point.Inc: The Way I Work: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch: started as a hobby .... was researching Silicon Valley start-ups and decided to post his findings online ..... 9.2 million visitors a month and boasts annual revenue of about $10 million ..... 25 full-time employees ..... still spends much of his time reporting and writing. On most days, he works remotely from his home near Seattle, in a cavelike home office. From morning until night, Arrington sits in darkness in front of his computer—blasting music, working his contacts, and focusing on what he loves best: breaking big stories. ....... We break more big stories than everyone else combined in tech ...... I’d work until I passed out, and wake up eight or nine hours later, which might be 4 p.m. or 3 a.m. Then I’d work again until I passed out. That was my life for four years ...... Negotiating with companies over how news breaks is a big part of what we do. ...... I usually spend about half my day talking to sources, either on the phone or on IM. ..... There are very few people in Silicon Valley—or in tech, in general—whom I don’t know pretty well. Chasing down stories is my favorite part of my job. ....... I truly love entrepreneurs. They’re my rock stars. I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. ...... . Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. ...... I also use Skype a lot. The video quality is great. When you go full screen, it’s like the other person is in the room. ...... I don’t want to chitchat about your family, because I don’t know you. ...... When I first started TechCrunch, I would post several times a day. ...... By the third day of writing, I got my first comment from somebody who wasn’t my mom. ...... people started subscribing to my RSS feed. Every day, that number would go up—10, 13, 100. That constant feedback is my reward. I still scan for comments on my posts. ....... an event every month ..... I wrote a blog post inviting people to a party—10 people came. I made hamburgers. We drank beer and stayed up until 4 a.m. drinking Scotch by the fire. Two weeks later, I had another party, and 20 people showed up. About 100 people came to the next one, then 200. ....... because I’m introverted—I like being alone— ....... In 2008, somebody spit on me at a conference in Germany. Before that, I had a death-threat incident—I had to hire private security 24/7 to protect me and my parents. ...... I have never been very good at managing. I want to be writing, and it’s hard to be a coach and a player at the same time. Plus, I’m moody. .... We have never had an executive meeting. Instead, we use this program called Yammer to make sure everyone at TechCrunch is on the same page. ...... After dinner, I’m usually back at the computer. That’s when I do thought and opinion pieces. I’ll spend two or three hours on one post. ..... I like working late at night. There are no interruptions. I usually listen to music when I write. I like hard music that is not happy music—Metallica, Eminem, Rage Against the Machine.You can see the vultures now circling Mashable.
Arrington is a former lawyer. His parents were happier when he was a lawyer than when he quit lawyering and became a blogger. Blogger what? Today there are more bloggers than lawyers and software programmers in America. Blogging can make you money. Ask Arrington. It has made him a millionaire.
9.2 million visitors, wow. This blog - Netizen - gets 30,000 plus visitors monthly. Used to be worse. The best day has been 3,000 visits. On good days I will get 1500 these days. Those numbers are known to go up over time.
Daily Blog Tips: AOL Just Acquired TechCrunch
Scoble: TechCrunch to keep independent voice, Arrington says
The Huffington Post: AOL Buys TechCrunch
Scripting.com: Congrats to TechCrunch and Mike (Natural Born Blogger)
AllThingsD: AOL-TechCrunch Deal: Pros and Cons
Forbes: How AOL/Techcrunch Can Scale From Here
VentureBeat: Confirmed: AOL acquires TechCrunch, founder Arrington to stay at least 3 years
Wall Street Journal: Exactly What is TechCrunch Worth?
NYConvergence: AOL Acquires TechCrunch
Traffick: So Much for Techcrunch can we expect the most vibrant, obsessively-followed Silicon Valley blog imaginable, to neuter its culture and gradually fade into respectability?
VillageVoice: AOL TechCrunch Deal Is Done, So What Does This Mean for Everyone Else? Arrington's always been a cantankerous guy who isn't one to be kept on a short leash..... larger corporations are finally catching on to the need to Let Bloggers Be Bloggers instead of faceless drones who have to have their publish buttons babysat ..... he built influence by covering every startup that would talk to him
NYMag: Jason Calcanis Celebrates the AOL-TechCrunch Deal by Calling Arrington ‘a Trainwreck’
TechEye: AOL to buy Techcrunch - Needs it TechCrunch is a big and successful website with a loyal fanbase. AOL is trying to expand itself but has had no luck building such sites itself....AOL in the past had acquired Weblogs, the blogging company behind Engadget, and it has been those that have helped AOL compensate for steep loss of traffic.
Arpit Shah: Breaking: AOL to acquire TechCrunch
Geek With Laptop: AOL Buy TechCrunch Blog in $25 Million Purchase “You are going to get more page views out of a TechCrunch user than you would out of an average user of the Internet.” .... is third behind Engadget – another AOL blog, and Gizmodo, which is owned by Gawker Media. With ownership of two out of three, it seems AOL is putting a lot of energy into controlling the tech end of the blogosphere. ..... Arrington has said “It was time for us either to start investing a lot more money in things like technology and marketing – which probably meant raising a venture round – or to simply sell and partner with somebody who could do that,” adding “AOL has a very robust, large blog network that shows they have the software side nailed. So it solves a real problem for us from the technology side.”
Srmana Mitra: Bootstrapping Pays Off For Michael Arrington
