Bebo had found potential buyers in Microsoft and Yahoo, sources told BoomTown's Kara Swisher, not Google or News Corp. as TechCrunch reported. These facts were "easy to find out about by anyone who can pick up a phone and ask around like a reporter is supposed to," WSJ vet Swisher writes on her blog. Then she goes on to slam Michael Arrington's TechCrunch some more.
Aside for his habit of throwing money at dodgy startups which are then given lavish coverage in his blog, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has a skinflint reputation. (Certainly, the bloggers in his employ have never known largesse.) A college chum of Arrington's at Claremont-McKenna now tells us that Arrington, spotting a market opportunity, edged out a poor family to corner the market on recycling his dorm's beer cans. From earning beer money, to Davos. Impressive! (Photo by Ryan Froerer)
Michael Arrington's on-again, off-again flame Meghan Asha is not the golddigger some of you — tsk, tsk — unfairly presume her to be. Turns out she's loaded! Like private jet, loaded. "She's from the Bay Area," a tipster tells us,"and at least one of her parents is a big deal. Apparently [Asha's] family paid for the private jet that she and Julia Allison took from CES to the Crunchies." If this news is meant to warm people's hearts to Asha, it just might — until they reach the conclusion that she must actually be into him. (Photo by Robert Scoble)
Welcome to the club, Mike. Fox Business Network invited TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington onto its Happy Hour show yesterday. Arrington had been led to believe the topic would be his site's presidential primary endorsements, for which he interviewed the candidates and asked for positions on 10 tech-centric issues. Instead, host Cody Willard asked Arrington about Google versus Yahoo. This happens every election cycle: People who normally talk about tech switch gears and start making big political statements. The mainstream public ignores them. Might as well ask Barack Obama to blog about Apache server configuration.
23andMe, the genetics startup cofounded by Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, has outed TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington as a cheapskate. When Arrington discovered that 23andMe was handing out its $999 testing "Spit Kits" for free at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he hit up Wojcicki and Avey for a refund on the kit he'd already bought. They refused. Arrington nevertheless wrangled a free kit from the pair, which he's now giving away to TechCrunch readers.
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Robert Scoble is putting advertisements on his blog starting on or after March 3, when his new online-video channel with Fast Company launches. We spoke to Scoble, who's currently attending the Davos Forum in Switzerland.
For months now, Matt Schlicht and Mazyar "Mazy" Kazerooni, who blog as Minds 1 and A, have been keeping me entertained by IM and elsewhere. They're also the media pranksters behind OpenHulu, the website which unlocked Hulu's video library. Schlicht and Kazerooni, barely legal entrepreneurs at the ages of 19 and 18 respectively, took a trip from Orange County to attend the Crunchies, TechCrunch's overblown startupfest. Contrast their enthusiasm to Ted Dziuba's jaded disbelief, and you'll see just how the Valley keeps luring young minds to stoke the startup fires — and just as swiftly burns them out.
While the rest of the shutterbugs are off slacking, Duncan Riley commits an act of journalism and quick-posts photos from Friday night's Crunchies party. Too bad I'm in half of them. Helpful hint, Duncan: Most readers prefer photos of pretty girls. If you hit Page Down a few times you'll get to soon-to-be-all-over-national-TV CNET reporter Natali Del Conte flashing that Britneyesque — and I mean that in the best possible way — smile of hers just before leaving for New York City. Lots and lots more photos at Helluvajob. That's Lane Hartwell's camera in the left of this shot, and I saw Brian Solis snapping away, too, so there'll be more pix over the weekend.
Click here to buy your $40 ticket to tonight's latest round of Web 2.0 awards. It had been sold out, but I just tested a purchase and there were multiple seats available for the balcony and dress circle section of the Herbst Theater. Full disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and I get along just fucking fine, thank you. Mike doesn't confuse me with Nick Denton — unlike certain other journalists I could name, except they picked up the tab so it's all cool.
Blogger Om Malik could never have predicted he'd have a heart attack at the age of 41. But he did foresee one thing clearly: He would never build a business on a single blog so closely identified with one author. His spinoff blogs — Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech, and FoundRead — have not matched GigaOm's success; of the four, only NewTeeVee, in my opinion, shows promise of being a breakout hit like the original. But unlike Michael Arrington, who built TechCrunch solely on his startup cult of personality, Malik has sought to diversify his media startup in a way that it can survive him. Until December 28, this was merely wise in theory.
The main thing anyone ever knew about Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, is that it launched Michael Arrington's career at TechCrunch. Desperate to find out more information about this "Web 2.0" thing he kept hearing about, Arrington started blogging, and eventually left Edgeio, swapping a 10 percent stake in TechCrunch for a 10 percent stake in Edgeio. Arrington's stake is now worthless — which I think would actually make Teare the savvier businessman here — and Edgeio's assets have been sold at auction.
Think TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has a problem with women? Boston blogger Ryan Barrett got into "virtual journalism" in part due to her admiration for "Michael Arrington's razor-sharp sarcasm." But that admiration didn't survive an in-person meeting, according to a November post to Barrett's blog. My favorite part is when she scolds Arrington on when it's appropriate to "bring out a little prick."
Dead startups, lying CEOs, and disgruntled, unpaid employees seem to follow Michael Arrington wherever he goes. He doesn't cause them, but he sure seems to attract them. First there was Edgeio. Now, the latest is online-storage company OmniDrive, a startup which the conflicts-embracing TechCrunch editor invested last year. Nik Cubrilovic, OmniDrive's founder and CEO, disputes the assertion that it may be time to put the company on deathwatch. Former employees disagree, pointing out that it's in a crowded market of bigger players, is beset by technical problems, and rumored to have lost its CTO. What's the real story?
