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.
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
No, you're not. Clicked the link, went "Holy shit, couldn't make it past the headline without seeing Arrington". Needless to say I'll have to find a way to fall asleep tonight without knowing the latest in the saga of the mess that is TechCrunch.
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).
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.
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.
“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?
She is an egocentric person who could not handle the fact that he wanted to help both her company and TC, the brand that he spent many years of his life building. So she kicked him off the board in a completely immature way.
Not getting involved in blog politics, but Arrington/Crunchfund is an investor in Pando, TC is a competitor, the Pando Execs and board likely made a decision based on the competitive environment.
I can see for a generic company with investors A, B, and C; if B decided to get involved with a competitor, the board and execs might make plans accordingly. We've seen this in the seed VC world with express decisions to not invest in competing companies.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 81.1 ms ] threadPart 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.
To me, this speaks volumes on how big the loss of joshua topolsky & co. was to engadget.
It seems that someone always finds the needs to say something along the lines of "AOL exists?", and/or something about their beverage coasters.
No bubble here.
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?
I can see for a generic company with investors A, B, and C; if B decided to get involved with a competitor, the board and execs might make plans accordingly. We've seen this in the seed VC world with express decisions to not invest in competing companies.
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