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Posts Tagged “
Michael Arrington
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party report
blogging for dollars
TechCrunch drops blog format for newspapery look
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has said that he wants to displace CNET as the tech industry's top news site. His redesigned home page suggests that TechCrunch won't so much defeat CNET as become CNET. Arrington has replaced the Boing Boingy full-posts-in-reverse-order blog format on TC's home page with much more of a news-site layout. There's a top story with a custom-written "deck," to use newsroom jargon, meant to get you to click through to the whole article. It's similar to the format used by most newspaper sites. Here's a demo of the click-through trick: More »
savvyauntie
Getting rich as a mommyblogger without the messy mommy part
Add mommyblogging to the long list of maternal entitlements. It's the old story of exploiting your childbearing for commercial gain, this time online! Ah, but even ladybloggers without kids can get a piece of the mommyblogger ad budget. According to the Washington Post, Melanie Notkin's SavvyAuntie.com had advertisers and "a well-known venture capitalist" after her from day one, interested in cashing in with her on on the "parenting site for nonparents." We're reminded of PlanetOut's fundraising days, when venture capitalists told the gay and lesbian site's founders that they should refocus the site to appeal to gays and their hip straight friends. Notkin has a point, though: If you're going to buy your best girlfriend's brood a Barack Obama onesie, shouldn't you be allowed to blog about it, add affiliate e-commerce links, and run ads on the page, too? More »
clips
Shatner to Arrington: "What are you doing?"
For $149, you too can go to LiveAutographs.com and get a personalized video and autograph from William Shatner, Carmen Electra, Hulk Hogan, Ted Nugent, about half the cast of Lost, or Battlestar Galactica's Cyloneriffic Tricia Helfer. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington blew a couple of Benjamins to test the site and sure enough, here's Shatner's videotaped greeting. Drop the price to ten bucks and we've got a business model for Julia Allison.
quotable
Michael Arrington "classless" says Stewart Alsop
Reporter Brad Stone jumps into the fracas between the Demo and TechCrunch 50 conference organizers, with venture capitalist and Demo founder Stewart Alsop saying of Arrington's public baiting:What I’ve seen from Mike Arrington has just been classless,” he said. “I don’t understand what business objective he has other than to get notoriety.”More »
techcrunch
Arrington to PR people: Please die
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's latest barbed-arrow barrage is aimed dead-center at the foreheads of the most annoying people in our inbox: The PR professionals who hawk startups. More »
Tech Tyrants
The 10 most terrible tyrants of tech
Here's to the screaming ones. The chair-throwers. The death-threat makers. The imperious gazers. The ones who see things differently — and will stare you down until you do, too. They're not fond of rules, especially those outlined by the human-resources department on "treating your employees with respect." And they have no respect for conversational decibel levels. You can cower before them, hide from them, quote them behind their backs, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they're so damn loud. They've worked at Google. Apple. Microsoft. AOL. They've ruled the industry — or they've failed, loudly. Below, we present you tech's 10 most tempestuous bosses — the ones who scream different. While some see them as sociopaths, Valleywag sees genius. More »
7:00 AM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
46,088 views,
25 comments
Latest by Dror Poleg: What is Arrington doing on that list?! Who cares about this guy? more »
Tech Tyrants
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington: Doesn't discriminate — holds everyone in contempt More »
techcrunch50
Arrington, Calacanis doom 50 startups to obscurity
Last year, self-identified kingmakers Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis put together a conference with a gimmick: They selected 40 Web 2.0-ish startups to make their onstage debuts, and kept the list of the chosen "TechCrunch40" secret until showtime. Looking back at that list, I can't say I'm stoked to see this year's expanded roster of 50 companies. Each one will be making its public launch in a down market, on the same day as 49 other startups. So don't worry, guys, I won't be sniffing around the San Francisco Design Center Concourse trying to get the secret list this year. We'll let GigaOm have this one.
nowpublic
Robert Scoble, other Valley bon vivants subject of latest ego-stroking linkbait
Vancouver-based NowPublic is ostensibly all about citizen journalism. But since Guy Kawasaki sold Truemors to it and signed up as an advisor, it's becoming better known for publishing flattering lists of "influencers," supposedly ranking them according to various social media metrics. The first "Most Public" list focused on New York, but a new list for the Valley and San Francisco is "coming soon." And by virtue of being included in the latest edition, we received an early copy as a press release. Who comes out on top? Ubiquitous attention slut Robert Scoble, naturally. Full list after the jump. More »
party report
Lame as it ever was, TechCrunch party spawns much better afterparty
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is viciously critical of Web startups that make their users pay for their wares. But he's perfectly happy to charge party sponsors for booths. The return on investment was hard to find at TechCrunch's annual party held at August Capital's Sand Hill Road offices on Friday. The booths, in the midst of free booze, pretty people, and business cards to swap, went completely unnoticed. The party, TechCrunch's third annual event held with the VC firm, was unremarkable. But the afterparty was legendary. We got in and took photos of the whole thing. More »
rumormonger
Has News Corp. acquired TechCrunch? Everyone's talking about it, but it's not happening
A startup founder tells us that, over the weekend, he and his friends overheard TechCrunch writers celebrating the sale of Michael Arrington's blog to News Corp.'s Fox Interactive unit — Rupert Murdoch's home for MySpace, Rotten Tomatoes, and other wayward websites. The source tells us that the deal has been signed, but TechCrunch is waiting for its summer party at August Capital's Sand Hill Road offices to announce it. Another source who's spoken recently to Arrington says that a deal is on. But a highly placed News Corp. source says there's "no truth" to the rumor. What's behind this wave of TechCrunch sale talk? More »
caption contest
The number of good ideas I've had
The annual gathering of techies at Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp in Sebastopol is like Bohemian Grove but slightly less secretive. Want to know who was in and who was out? Investor Joi Ito's photos should give you an idea of who's who this year. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "Two guys, one glass" by montoya. (Photo by Joi Ito)
blogging for dollars
AOL wants to buy TechCrunch at a 70 percent discount to Arrington's nine-figure price tag
Time Warner's AOL and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington have been talking for the past two months, with AOL offering Arrington $20 million to $30 million to acquire tech's most dutiful clearinghouse for startup PR. Kara Swisher says that TechCrunch wants more than $30 million; we've heard he's looking for more like $100 million. Arrington has perpetually shopped his site around; all this deal talk reminds us how, just the other weekend, we overhead him wishing he could just sell out and move to Hawaii. Which makes for a nice pipe dream, but a weak negotiating position. Another reason to be skeptical: This is not Arrington's first flirtation with Time Warner. More »
Calley Nye
Did TechCrunch editor unpublish his writer after a breakup?
We had heard rumors that the relationship between 38-year old TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington and 22-year old Exonerated PR founder Calley Nye might have been more than strictly professional. Thanks to a tipster's sleuthing, we found that blabby blogger Robert Scoble had confirmed that the pair had consummated their relationship on Facebook. Since unpublishing posts written by former friends-with-benefits is all the rage these days, that might explain why Nye's latest post on TechCrunch has disappeared from the site — just like Arrington removed the relationship status indicator from his Facebook profile. After the jump, the official screenshot of Arrington's profession of affection for the most recent addition to the TechCrunch contributor list. More »
great moments in journalism
Meet Calley Nye, snacky flack turned TechCrunch contributor
Calley Nye is a fresh-faced young woman from Southern California who founded her own flack shack, Exonerated PR, to leverage a preternatural ability to sign up for every social network under the sun with the handle "Silicon Calley." In the Seesmic video above, the 22-year-old squeals with a friend, "We love you Michael Arrington," shortly before Arrington posted a shout-out for an unnamed PR person. Could Nye be the rep referred to? Arrington certainly liked her enough to hire her. More »
party report
Wellington Partners happy to spend our worthless American currency
At the brand new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco last night, the team at European VC firm Wellington Partners celebrated the addition of an outpost in Palo Alto to their existing offices in London and Munich with a swell mixer. The hors d'oeuvres? Cheese gougères, tiny lamb chops, mushroom napoleons, Kobe beef sliders, croutons with creme fraiche, smoked salmon and caviar and a bite-sized tuna tartar, all washed down with French wine which topped $300 a bottle — which, as the joke went, "Is like, what, 20 euros?" Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis explained that for European private equity investors, the American market offers a double-dip: More »
social news
