AOL Acquires Huffington Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html

How does AOL even make money to buy things anymore?

somewhere google is weeping

i imagine arianna taking the money and running tbh

“This is a statement that the company is making investments, and in this case a bold investment, that fits right into our strategy,” Mr. Armstrong said in an interview Sunday. “I think this is going to be a situation where 1 plus 1 equals 11.”

guh both these companies are so gross they deserve each other

Just the statement that AOL and Huffington Post are now at about an equal numerical level tells you most of what you need to know.

I believe the part where hackers acquired NASDAQ may be a slightly more important story

or in other words ice cr?m otm

By acquiring The Huffington Post’s reporting resources, AOL hopes to counter the perception that it is a farm for subpar content.

facepalm

lol
didnt think hp headlines could get any more obnoxious, guess we'll see

this is hilarious but mostly depressing, welcome to the future of "content" and "content production"

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html

hahaha that is amazing

a liberal drudge all gunked up with seo/social/crowd sourced bullshit -- ariannas beautiful $300m dream

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#

― max, Monday, February 7, 2011 12:38 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/05/what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html

― max, Monday, February 7, 2011 12:38 AM

hahahaha

the pageview wars

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY MY BEAUTIFUL CONTENT PRODUCERS

http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4d482489cadcbb9004030000-915/slide-131.jpg

http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4d482498cadcbbeb7d1a0000-915/slide-211.jpg

"Lady Gaga Goes Pantsless In Paris"

http://i51.tinypic.com/107ozub.jpg

The only answer...is modern bisk poetry.

Reminding you all:

Subject: Aol is sucks!!!!!what you can do with ther cd rom bisk
From: saund✧✧✧@r✧✧.c✧✧ (saunders)
Date: 1996/04/27
Newsgroups: alt.aol-Sucks

cost to mutch
it suck
no good
send to many disk.
Me and my friends took a bisk and lit it on fire and froze it
slamed it angaisnt the boor.

Adapt and reuse.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/megan-fox-wears-leotard-l_n_364263.html

untoppable?

cost to mutch
it suck

today we are all "one of the sexy boyslaves in Nick Denton's weird empire"

the headline of that megan fox one is pretty amazing, but the one about super bowl google results is one of the saddest pieces of writing that has ever existed

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8061/aolbeef.jpg

Howard Fineman: The Huffington Post and AOL: "Going There" Goes Global
:

this interview is hilarious. the fury on both sides.

loved this exchange:

Still, I’m amazed you’re trying to tell me that The Huffington Post wasn’t started as a lefty blog?

I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m telling you things. I’m not trying, O.K.?

reads like intrvue by sms

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

Sorry

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/12/arianna-huffington-post-sale

The class action is led by Jonathan Tasini, a writer and trade unionist, who wrote more than 250 posts for Huffington Post on an unpaid basis until he dropped out shortly after the news and comment site was sold to AOL earlier this year.

Tasini complained that "Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffington's plantation

yeah i guess voluntarily writing for free, over and over again, is a *bit* like slavery when you think about it

where are my goddamned ilx residuals

Spent on several wild weekends somewhere.

"essentially" doing a lot of heavy lifting there

i am essentially dating christina hendricks

That class action suit is some grade A garbage from a legal standpoint. But perhaps the goal is just to try to put pressure on HuffPo to change their model by drawing attention to it. In which case I still think it won't work, but it's a less stupid explanation than imagining that the plaintiff or his lawyers think they're going to get any money out of this.

If I were HuffPo and I were ruthless I don't think I'd offer a dime of settlement. I'd rather spend the money to fight it and not open myself and other media outlets to future strike suits.

Come to think of it, maybe freelance writers should be suing huffpo's bloggers, since they're DEvaluing writing and chipping away at their ability to make a living.

http://thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an-aol-content-slave-speaks-out/

“Do you guys even CARE what I write? Does it make any difference if it’s good or bad?” I said.

“Not really,” was the reply.

Products & Services: Content

We aim to delight our customers by creating valuable content driven by their passions and interests

We have a best-in-class editorial team creating unique content experiences across our properties. We are also developing a global content platform that will empower production of world-class differentiated content to consumers at scale.

lol waht an incredibly horrible company

what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-20/aol-is-looking-to-reduce-current-stable-of-50-brands-ceo-armstrong-says.html

lol @ having 50 shitty brands

what-time-superbowl-start_n_819173.html

This story has been edited for greater clarity.

"TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over"

lol

mg siegler is, if anything, worse than mike arrington

paul carr is horrible too but he has some vague sense of his ethical duties

otm

i love how there couldnt possibly be any perverse incentives in this case cause that just not how they do it

<3 mg

i like paul carr too

i read that tc post last night & thought it was p good

techcrunch is basically everything i hate about "tech" "journalism" wrapped up in one self-satisfied lil package

what-time-techcrunch-end_n_819173.html

lol

nobody can self-righteously bluster like siegler

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/editorial-independence/

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/07/exclusive-arrington-out-at-aol-for-real-this-time/

http://twitter.com/#!/rachelsklar/status/111623120732958721

^ boom

could totally be an engadget part ii

http://twitter.com/#!/karaswisher/status/111623539395801088

hm

gotta tell you, now more than ever i wanna go to that disrupt conference.

http://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/111631950455902208

irl lol

this is interesting, re engadget: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/engadget.com/?metric=uv

via hacker news (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972268), where they're also discussing this

eh, looks like gizmodo dipped too so who knows

giz dipped cause of the redesign tho

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/08/not-leaving-quietly/

http://i.imgur.com/5Z5LM.png

omg so emo

lol @ aol imo

otm

wow

http://gawker.com/5838501/

that's pretty lazily written

how do you mean

Love the idea of a blog about internet startups having a badass 'fuck-you' attitude

"Ceding control to the Huffington Post will be the death of everything - the voice, the swagger, the 'fuck you' attitude - that makes TechCrunch great." Emphasis from the original (!).

except in the original it's emphasized because he's quoting someone else. either the valleywag writer didn't notice that because he didn't read the whole piece he's writing about or he's deliberately suggesting the emphasis is carr's which is a weird way of making him come off as more forceful than he actually is.

paul carr is such a tool

well yeah

techcrunch is a garden shed of tools

ehhhhhhh hoos i feel you but why did carr italicize (rather than use quote marks)? i think what ryans doing is well in bounds

i like paul carr

you like a tool

he wants 'bringing nothing to the party' to be 'a moveable feast' but its just a more polished tucker max bit imo

http://allthingsd.com/20110908/after-aol-rules-out-techcrunch-sale-to-arrington-tense-severance-negotiations-taking-place/

urls-that-neatly-summarise-the-article-are-awesome

lol

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/arrington-is-out-at-aol-and-techcrunch/

But some of TechCrunch’s writers and editors are considering leaving AOL and TechCrunch to start a rival blog, according to a person briefed on the developments who was not authorized to speak publicly.

i would do that cause then maybe u can sell it to aol later

lol

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/techcrunch-wall-street-journal_b_958559.html

http://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/113339800295182336

here we go

max otm. carr worst person i have met.

ever.

Huffington's story appears to makes sense, and Arrington and his army are really coming off as sooks.

i'm still trying to figure out how the apparent conflict of interest didn't occur to anybody until after they announced crunchfund

like

who the fuck are you purported businesspeople

heh, im sure it occurred to "them"! they dont care; they just want crunchfunds money!

the conflict-of-interest thing was just arianna huffington seeing an opportunity to dump arrington

yeah probably

as gawkers ryan tate has documented, huffpo is rife w/ conflicts of interest http://gawker.com/5837690/

right but i'm saying it seems to me arrington & TC should have foreseen that the conflict would be poorly received publicly, and that if AOL was buying into such an obvious questionable scenario maybe they had diff motives than "putting money in mike arrington's pocket"

wld really like to have been a fly on proverbial wall.

xp that links to this http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-says-reporters-are-not-allowed-to-invest-in-companies-they-cover-except-michael-arrington-2011-4

It's always tricky to get an unbiased picture when press agencies' fallings-out are covered by other press agencies.

like is arrington just a bigger and more egotistical fool than i realized or

i wouldve really liked for there to be a bomb on the wall that killed all of these people

"NO ONE WILL CARE, FOR I AM ARRINGTON, OF THE INTERNET"

Most annoying thing is that people like Siegler are trying to drag the readers into it.

most annoying thing is everything

hoos the thing is itd never really been a problem for arrington before? and my guess is, if arianna hadnt released that initial statement (w/o arringtons knowledge), it wouldnt really have been an issue. tech journalism!

ice cram otm

oh man. that arrington guy. hate him so much. what an asshole. can't believe he did that awful thing.

"The fact is, 60% of your data is duplicate. If you have an MP3 file, someone else probably has the same one, for example. Each person only tends to have around 25 GB of unique, personal data, he says. Using patented de-duplication algorithms, compression techniques and encryption, Bitcasa keeps costs down (way, way down, but that’s it’s secret sauce), which is what makes it so affordable. Bitcasa also explained that a freemium model is on its way with less-than-unlimited storage for free."

uh

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/with-bitcasa-the-entire-cloud-is-your-hard-drive-for-only-10-per-month/

And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?And the pricing! How on earth is it so cheap?

at the v bottom of that long ass post, btw is

Disclosure: Crunchfund is an investor in Bitcasa

unbelievable. the stones on these guys. god.

is this fun for you or

Disclosure: CrunchFund is an investor in Bitcasa.

No shit. I never would've guessed reading the article.

Interesting principle though.

xxp's :-)

well i was UHing that they expect the copyright police not to come running after their deduplication process

and then yeah obv the tone b/w the disclosure is p lol

If Huffington was indeed looking for a reason to upend TechCrunch they certainly gave her one.

hott

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/13/team-arrington/

After all the incredibly zealous LOOK AT OUR NEW LOGO LOOOOOK shtick a few weeks ago I didn't think the navel-gazing could possibly get any worse.

first comment: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/the-2011-disrupt-sf-battlefield-final-round-companies/

ariel arrffington

AMC should make a show about this.

do blog comments look good on a television screen

Arrington quits/leaves/"decides" from AOL, starts a crunch lab

smash cut to arrington slouched in an empty room eating http://stores.intuitwebsites.com/hstrial-JMartAsianFoo/catalog/nestle%20crunch.jpg

surrounded by empty wrappers watching qvc and occasionally mumbling 'oh, thats disruptive' at the tv

http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/and-the-winner-of-techcrunch-disrupt-is-shaker/

Three days and 31 startup pitches later, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2011 has been determined. Out of the 29 startups and two audience choice winners, we whittled the list down to seven finalists, which included Bitcasa, Cake Health, Farmigo, Prism Skylabs, Shaker, TalkTo, and Trello. The winner from this group receives the Disrupt Cup and $50,000, taking over possession from Disrupt New York winner Getaround. Without further ado, the runners-up is Prism Skylabs. And the winner is…Shaker! Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Prism Skylabs and is a pending investor in Shaker.

lol

lord

http://twitter.com/#!/paulcarr

These blokes are acting like jilted lovers

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/barry-diller-skewers-aol-for-firing-michael-arrington-from-techcrunch/

It’s not a journalistic enterprise, TechCrunch. And so to have treated it as such is to destroy it. So now, he’s gone, and now they own this thing, which has no voice. Congratulations. What a good piece of business.

http://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/114224473804242946

If these guys keep up the whinging they're going to lose whatever support they've still got. I won't be following Arrington to his new personal blog because I'm sick of his henchmen shitting up the internet with this crap.

GO ARIANNA is where I'm probably going with this

http://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/114426586735976448

*single tear slides down cheek*

^

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/09/15/arrington-talks-new-blog-and-how-he-almost-stayed-at-aol/

pls don't spare us w/ the updates on this fascinating story im on the edge of my seat here

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/16/last-post/

carr:

What I knew last week, but can only write now, is that while Heather, Mike and other senior editorial staffers were making a stand for the site’s editorial independence from The Huffington Post, Erick cut a side deal with Huffington to guarantee him the top job once Mike was gone.

yeah that post really just concretized my h8

ugh thank god

also wow @ schonfeld

http://twitter.com/#!/erickschonfeld/status/114839470183944193

http://twitter.com/#!/myspacetom/status/114829734516498433
http://twitter.com/#!/myspacetom/status/114830230518112257

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/16/back-to-our-regularly-scheduled-program-posterous-raises-5-million/

Um, oh hey guys, what’s up? Nothing much over on my side, except that I’d really like a Diet Coke. Also, I’m hearing that nascent photo sharing app née blogging platform Posterous is raising some money. So yeah that’s what’s up over here in my neck of TC HQ.

Chew on this if you’re in the mood for some actual tech news; the simple blogging service and Tumblr competitor has just raised $5 million in Series B according to multiple sources. Taking part in the round will be Redpoint Ventures, newcomer Jafco Ventures and existing angels.

oh man

meanwhile

http://twitter.com/#!/paulcarr/status/114840198164123648
http://twitter.com/#!/paulcarr/status/114840556500299776

the film of this would made by aaron spelling rather than aaron sorkin

XD

http://twitter.com/#!/alexia/status/114832530674421760

re diet coke

hmm

i guess paul carr got her a lot of diet cokes?

if so that is kind of sweet

Man I wouldn't blame this Eric guy for trying to cut a deal to keep his job, it's gotta be hard to find a W-2 writing job.

Which is to say we shouldn't be surprised that people opt to continue getting paid to eat shit sandwiches in many situations.

Though obviously everyone involved here is a big ol drama queen

http://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/114841836761251840

Yeah, it sounds like 1. Arrington clashed with Huffington 2. Schonfeld stepped up because let's face it who wouldn't 3. Arrington's chums went feral for some loyalty-based reason I still can't get a grip on

xp loooooool

lol

http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/resized/0005/3784/53784v7-max-250x250.jpg

p sure that's just phil and clare out of modern family

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/16/paul-i-accept-your-resignation/

loving these URLs

Michael Arrington · Top Commenter · Founder at TechCrunch
This is just sad.
Reply · Like · Follow Post · 2 minutes ago

looool

Is the startup culture actually producing anything of value (either monetary or social)? I mean, Instagram, Twitter, etc., but what else has come out of this environment that's either making money or being widely used?

(and those two didn't come out of the TechCrunch/ycombiner/etc. world anyway, right?)

there's def good stuff out there, like sparkrelief (http://www.sparkrelief.org/) or hand things down (http://beta.handthingsdown.com/iphone/index.html), mytab (https://www.mytab.co/), and dradt (http://www.disasterrelief.cc/) is being used pretty heavily in texas right now since the fires.

making money or widely used is a different question, though.

imo the best and most interesting startup stuff is happening in nyc and dc. in dc especially, a town already full of do-gooders, social entrepreneurship is a big deal.

ime ppl in silicon valley wanna build the next facebook or groupon, ppl in dc wanna ~change the world~ and shit.

that's an interesting distinction

imo the best and most interesting startup stuff is happening in nyc and dc.

what nyc startups do you think are doing cool things?

i really like getaround (http://www.getaround.com/) and banksimple (https://banksimple.com/) who i count as ny even if they're in portland now.

i've heard of banksimple b/c alex payne, but i don't know anything about getaround. will check it out -- thx

np

notably, most of the cars on getaround are in california. silicon valley has the early adopter culture going for it, at least.

http://parislemon.com/post/10309036779/what-needs-to-be-said

Also the truth: AOL has not reached out to me once in this entire situation. You’d think they might care about something like that. Evidently, they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it, but it’s curious.

There is exactly one person to blame for all of this — and her name is not Erick.

http://twitter.com/#!/arrington/status/116572764739084290

D- zing tbh

i don't think he's zinging anyone

http://uncrunched.com/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/aut-viam-inveniam-aut-faciam/

Apparently my former colleague and fellow Diet Coke fiend Paul Carr is founding a startup post-TechCrunch, instead of heading back to professional blog jockeying like the rest of us pixel-stained wretches. Yay Paul.

So what on earth is it already? Well Carr himself told me that the startup is a media-play, traversing the intersection between old media and new media — “the third way,” as he puts it. Okay.

^ lol

Public executions of leaders tend to have a severe chilling effect on whoever takes over, and Arianna Huffington is, without a doubt, the current editor in chief of TechCrunch.

http://uncrunched.com/2011/09/29/aol-techcrunch-one-year-anniversary-a-look-back-and-a-look-forward/

this will end well

kinda wish it had already ended

otm

man the whole startup scene is so vapid and inane and i have no idea outside of like a couple thousand people looking to get rich why anyone is interested in it at all myself included techcrunch is a disgusting piece of shit and so is huffpost

2. ...???
3. profit

http://startupers.com/

^ i like this a lot tho

lol

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/mg-siegler-will-become-our-apple-columnist-and-join-crunchfund-as-a-vc/

!!!

did not see that coming

http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/03/welcome-to-crunchfund-mg-siegler/

lol

man the whole startup scene is so vapid and inane and i have no idea outside of like a couple thousand people looking to get rich why anyone is interested in it at all myself included techcrunch is a disgusting piece of shit and so is huffpost

― ice cr?m, Thursday, September 29, 2011 5:27 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

whenever I listen to tech podcasts I always end up thinking this

still listen tho

:(

lol it is oddly... fascinating \(O_O)/

http://parislemon.com/post/11005151954/on-the-next-venture

man the whole startup scene is so vapid and inane and i have no idea outside of like a couple thousand people looking to get rich why anyone is interested in it at all myself included techcrunch is a disgusting piece of shit and so is huffpost

man all the ecstatic comments on the crunchfund post...ugh

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/18/the-rumors-are-true-i-am-leaving-techcrunch/

who?

^^^

The whomors are true

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/24/jason-may-the-force-be-with-you/
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/goodbye-erick-hello-eric/

Don't Miss HuffPost Bloggers

Bernard-Henri Lévy
Toulouse, France, Islam

Tiffani Thiessen
How The Power Of Collective Kindness Can Make A Big Difference

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/08/sources-say-aol-seeking-buyers-for-engadget-and-techcrunch-arrington-not-in-the-least-bit-interested/

"Bikini'd AnnaLynne McCord Sucks On Popsicle"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/uploaded/tags/sideboob.gif?1338407865

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/sideboob

Good to see HuffPo take cues from Family Guy jokes

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/31/article-2181394-144CBF5E000005DC-149_634x485.jpg

Together they crack the toughest cold cases

So anyway I just recorded this Huffington Post Live chat thing with Cole Stratton, Janet Varney, Kristen Rutherford, Stephanie Escajeda and Jacob Soboroff about TV shows that should last forever, strange spinoffs and more besides. Random but cool! Will link it when it goes live.

america onliNED

Step by step

http://i.imgur.com/EcDJq.png

http://gawker.com/5993695/techcrunch-founder-michael-arringtons-history-of-abuse-allegations-includes-an-assault-investigation

I guess this is the defacto Techcrunch thread and fuck this guy to hell

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18jp4ncoovki3jpg/xlarge.jpg http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e50/adnams74/staal.jpg

amazing how this sort of thing goes unreported for so long, especially with a figure as controversial as this guy

trying really really hard not to judge without proper evidence or legal findings, but fuck

my friend just bought the url www.huffingtonpoop.com for $4

lol

it's times like these we learn to love again

max otm. carr worst person i have met.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), Monday, September 12, 2011 9:28 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

woof barks at carr

http://instagram.com/p/eAuTXeukpL/

nsfw

http://www.aol.co.uk/video/titstare-demo-at-hackathon-sf-2013/517925671/

https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/status/376817869280931840

can people just not link to huffington post

It crashes my browser at work now!

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God I know the fact that HuffPo is essentially a tabloid at this point is common knowledge, but this is even more mind-numbingly stupid than usual. a fucking 14 year old could pick holes in this "comedy did-u-kno" piece:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/brutally-honest-st-patricks-day-facts_n_4957861.html