AOL's share price has been flying high?!? Their stock price is down 25% since they purchased TechCrunch (no direct correlation implied); while the Dow and Nasdaq are hitting multi year highs. This is a company that has lost 80% of its value since the days when Google signed their big search deal with them putting a $10 billion value on the company - to say nothing of the long term disaster at AOL. And not to mention that they've gone from a cash generating machine just a few years ago, courtesy of the dying dial-up business, to currently bleeding to death.
I used to read TechCrunch daily while Arrington was at the helm. He kept it interesting, and they often had big scoops. I find that HackerNews has completely replaced my need to check in with TechCrunch to keep up on what's going on.
Ars Technica is one of the few other sources I keep up with regularly. TechCrunch just seems like a complete joke by comparison these days.
Crunchpad anyone? I found him too infrequent to be a major reason to visit the site. I suspect that most of the traffic hit techcrunch thanks to the endless link baiting of MG or popularity contest blather like their Twitter "coverage". Twitter used to be every other feature.
Other big winners were Sarah Lacy saying that old media is dead and no one wants to be a journalist at WSJ (how did that turn out btw) or other random bouts of idiocy (RSS is dead!)
Frankly, Techcrunch has long been a source of tech trolling. For trolls, by trolls. Its no wonder it went under - the sugar high simply ran out.
Absolutely, but you'll typically find huge eccentricities of character in someone capable of doing what Arrington did. I doubt you can separate his character from his results. He was like a pitbull latching on to the slightest hint of a scoop.
yes, but wasn't it the same attitude that actually got plenty of Angels to turn back on him? I cant recall certain articles but at some point VCs literally were avoiding him for unwilling to wait with breaking the news and spoiling a surprise that entire start-up worked for.
Comments
AOL's share price has been flying high?!? Their stock price is down 25% since they purchased TechCrunch (no direct correlation implied); while the Dow and Nasdaq are hitting multi year highs. This is a company that has lost 80% of its value since the days when Google signed their big search deal with them putting a $10 billion value on the company - to say nothing of the long term disaster at AOL. And not to mention that they've gone from a cash generating machine just a few years ago, courtesy of the dying dial-up business, to currently bleeding to death.
I used to read TechCrunch daily while Arrington was at the helm. He kept it interesting, and they often had big scoops. I find that HackerNews has completely replaced my need to check in with TechCrunch to keep up on what's going on.
Ars Technica is one of the few other sources I keep up with regularly. TechCrunch just seems like a complete joke by comparison these days.
Damn, shingen. I could have written your response word for word. Well said.
Not that Arrington itself did not have it's problems, though.
Crunchpad anyone? I found him too infrequent to be a major reason to visit the site. I suspect that most of the traffic hit techcrunch thanks to the endless link baiting of MG or popularity contest blather like their Twitter "coverage". Twitter used to be every other feature.
Other big winners were Sarah Lacy saying that old media is dead and no one wants to be a journalist at WSJ (how did that turn out btw) or other random bouts of idiocy (RSS is dead!)
Frankly, Techcrunch has long been a source of tech trolling. For trolls, by trolls. Its no wonder it went under - the sugar high simply ran out.
Absolutely, but you'll typically find huge eccentricities of character in someone capable of doing what Arrington did. I doubt you can separate his character from his results. He was like a pitbull latching on to the slightest hint of a scoop.
yes, but wasn't it the same attitude that actually got plenty of Angels to turn back on him? I cant recall certain articles but at some point VCs literally were avoiding him for unwilling to wait with breaking the news and spoiling a surprise that entire start-up worked for.