Maybe Aol's TechCrunch Deal Will Make It Cool Again
Confused about why continually hot tech blog TechCrunch would sell itself to continually beleaguered Aol? Me too. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (seated next to Armstrong, at right) basically said that it would relieve him of the need to always be working on back-end issues, like finding good engineers, but, hell, there are lots of companies in Silicon Valley to sell to that have good engineers.
On the other hand, I totally understand why Aol would buy TechCrunch. For that discussion, let's throw away mentions of synergies and the like and boil it down to two words: street cred. Despite being long-time owner of another popular tech blog -- Engadget -- the last time Aol had a worthy reputation in Silicon Valley was about the same time it was still mailing out CD-ROMS by the millions. Aol has, as is necessary, given TechCrunch editorial freedom, but having Arrington & Co. in the house helps. It not only gives Aol a bigger presence in the tech community, it also gives the signal that Aol is a company worth doing business with. If Aol had an advertising tagline right now it might be, "Such a great company, Michael Arrington sold TechCrunch to it!"
I would actually say that, in this case, image is more important than the back-end reasons to do a deal, but there are a few of those. One is that since the TechCrunch acquisition makes Aol an even bigger player in tech blogging, it will probably be the de facto ad platform for tech advertisers, if it isn't already.
And yes, there are a few benefits here for TechCrunch, though I'd still argue that other players -- like BNET's sibling CNET maybe? -- might have been a better fit. Say what you will about Aol's problems, but its Advertising.com network -- which includes branded and owned properties and other sites that use it to sell inventory, is still the biggest in the U.S., reaching 91 percent of all Internet users as of late last year. It will also work as a traffic driver for both parties. For all its troubles, Aol still had the fifth most traffic in the U.S. last month, per comScore.
Still, the sheen this deal potentially gives Aol is the far more interesting thing to talk about. It's probably no coincidence -- at least on Aol CEO Tim Armstrong's part -- that the deal was not only announced, but signed, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, an event attended this week by many of Silicon Valley's cool kids. Those speaking on the three-day agenda include Armstrong's former boss, Google CEO Eric Schmidt; VC Peter Thiel of Founders' Fund, Robert Scoble, Mark Pincus of Zynga and on and on. Sponsors included Skype, Sequoia Capital, Google, GE. To the extent that life is like high school, Aol just got its seat back at the best table in the cafeteria. But the hard work is still ahead of it -- proving it belongs there. (Video of Armstrong and Arrington signing the deal is below.)
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