
AOL looking to sell TechCrunch and Engadget for $70-$100 million - krogsgard
http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/08/sources-say-aol-seeking-buyers-for-engadget-and-techcrunch-arrington-not-in-the-least-bit-interested/
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mindcrime
Am I the only one thinking "who cares?" in response to this? I mean,
seriously, tech-blog drama is pretty boring and none of this seems to have a
whole lot of bearing on anything that's going on that's actually going to
change the world.

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rhizome
I have this fantasy of buying them both and making them respectable. Of
course, it would involve firing everybody currently involved.

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thinkingdeeply
Do you really want to believe this story? Which is written by someone who is
extremely bitter that they didn't get to be editor of TechCrunch and whose
property really isn't living up to expectations?

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evoxed
“I don’t know anything. No one tells me anything. I am not in the least bit
interested [in buying back TechCrunch]. I was Team Pando all the way until
Sarah Lacy fired me. That does not change my position on TechCrunch.”

Can anyone explain? I've got a grasp on the business side of most of this but
what role did he play at PandoDaily, and why was he fired by the founder and
_author of the article_?

~~~
PaulMest
Basically Sarah Lacy was upset that Arrington et al would still participate in
TechCrunch-related events.

Here is Arrington's side: <http://uncrunched.com/2012/04/09/about-pando/>

Here is a short blurb by MG Siegler:
<http://parislemon.com/post/20832114453/pando>

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evoxed
Thanks, that clears things up.

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beedogs
How the hell are two blogs worth $100m?

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tatsuke95
Yeah. The biggest tech blog in the world changes hands twice in a year for
astronomical sums, while the founder starts a VC fund. All being reported on
by a blog with VC ties.

No bubble here.

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larrys
Arrington won't be able to revive it to it's past glory. The shine is off. The
brand has been damaged. The power and mystic is gone.

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abdurraheem
"Actually, bringing Arrington back into the fold is a smart move for more
reasons than one: One source who has expressed interest in buying the
properties said raising the money wasn’t the hard part. The hard part is
finding a strong editorial figurehead to be at the helm."

To me, this speaks volumes on how big the loss of joshua topolsky & co. was to
engadget.

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djloche
This comment reminds me of what Arrington wrote regarding yahoo
(<http://uncrunched.com/2012/05/07/someone-better-than-that/>)

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benologist
Genuinely surprised Engadget's not worth more than that by itself considering
they mostly get paid for rewriting articles. The profit per article when they
sucker social sites into upvoting their spam must be fantastic.

~~~
elithrar
I'm really glad Topolsky and the rest of the ex-Engadget staff started up The
Verge. I still like to keep up with tech news, but Engadget became a
significant source of blog-spam.

~~~
martey
Is The Verge really much better? Their original editorial content is
interesting, but like Engadget, a significant number of their daily articles
just rehash news found elsewhere.

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elithrar
> a significant number of their daily articles just rehash news found
> elsewhere

Part of that is par for the course - short of getting their hands on every
gadget under the sun, there has to be some rehashing. They do seem to make
their source links pretty clear though (unlike Engadget; a pet peeve of mine)
and the ratio of rehashed content vs. reviews/commentary/etc seems much
higher. It's still early days yet, though, so we'll see if they keep to that
standard.

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dkrich
Heh, funny how the bloggers over there seem to be extremely concerned with the
$70 million valuation because of the lack of substantial revenue for TC and
Engadget but don't seem so worried about every other startup they cover.

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cagenut
I don't know where she's getting 20M, comscore says 16. And a huge chunk of
that is huffpost-tech and huffpost-science, which basically can't be spun off
(both the 'brands' and the tech are tied to the huffpo cms platform).

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bangbang
Did you hear that? That's the sound of the bubble beginning to pop.

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dave1619
I would like to see Arrington organize a purchase of TechCrunch. He'd bring a
voice back to TC that's been missing.

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kylelibra
Anyone have a list of potential buyers? Seems like the list would be really
short.

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mkramlich
I dunno, expecting a tenth-of-an-Instagram is stretching it.

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ktizo
I almost forgot that AOL was still going and running some things. I still have
loads of their awful CDs somewhere.

~~~
Bapabooiee
Do we really need this type of comment _every_ time AOL gets mentioned?

It seems that someone always finds the needs to say something along the lines
of "AOL exists?", and/or something about their beverage coasters.

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ktizo
Probably not. But then again, if the comment I posted is what crops up every
time AOL is mentioned, perhaps there is a reason for it other than purely the
general level of unimaginative net-waffle that I managed to embody there.

