I am worried about the long term of this deal as well. Can techcrunch post AOL leaks anymore (Not that AOL really has leaks anymore)? Will the upper echalon corporation politics effect the writings? Will the Disrupt and TC50 events still happen? I would assume they would, who knows. I am also curious about the crunchpad/jojo lawsuits going on. Will the added aol resources help? Not effect it? Hopefully techcrunch stays roughly the same, or I will need a new main news source.
Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
121–130 of 140 posts
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#122Wonder who's going to scoop the TechCrunch buy out price, since that's usually TechCrunch's job.
Reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/250/
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#123I just hope AOL starts paying all TC writers the ridiculously low monkey writer rate that it pays Weblogs writers. Ooh, and TC posts now get entered into the digg voting ring too!
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry. The word 'fair' tends to get me going slightly, because I'm a competitive person. That word tends to be used by people as a crutch. For more: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ and specifically: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html If the state of California didn't think what Arrington did was right, there'd be a law. We've built up a system of rules, we all have to follow them, Mike did, so he's in…
The State has the right to determine what is legal; I reserve for myself the right to determine what is fair. I encourage you to do the same.
"Law" is [theoretically] a consensus on "fairness". If we all went around killing each other based on our personal views, well that just wouldn't be very fair, now would it?
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there are any loopholes (so to speak), it's the role of the citizens to "exploit" them and the role of law makers to close them if necessary. That's a pretty bad attitude to have, that citizens should be trying to exploit as many loopholes as possible. That sets up citizenry vs. govt. as a competitive game, which is a great recipe for making something that's supposed to be cooperative become dysfunctional and comp…
I'd argue that complexity is what causes loopholes, rather than the other way around. Things like tax credits aren't 'loopholes' - they're specifically codified in the law for people to utilize, in an attempt to encourage certain behaviors. It's not gamesmanship, although there is some competitiveness between state tax laws (such as this WA vs CA capital gains thing). That's WA's incentive to get people with lots of…
Right, complexity definitely leads to loopholes, I was saying that it was an adversarial/exploitative attitude that leads to increasing complexity.
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#126I hope the hack writers get fired...
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
50% is quite standard for team acquisitions to my knowledge. However, for TechCrunch earn-out sounds quite high. I'm also surprised of the price, it seems low compared to many tech acquisitions. TechCrunch has a lot of eyeballs, even if it doesn't have main stream audience. Midsize Finnish regional newspaper companies have market caps around €180M. TechCrunch, a major international tech publication with millions of r…
It's a lot harder to get ads for an international media. I'd guess most of the ads on www.techcrunch.com are payed by US marketing budgets. The people who manage those only care about US viewers. So question N:1 is how many US viewers, without ad blockers the site has. N:2 - for how long is it gone keep them. A regional Finnish newspaper is very likely to keep it's audience in one form or another for a long time. Tha…
A regional Finnish newspaper is very likely to keep it's audience in one form or another for a long time
That's the gist I think. TechCrunch is making $10M revenue in a year (http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-is-close-to-buying-techcr...). It's hard to say how much of that remains as a profit, but I would expect that with AOL helping with ad sales and infrastructure, they can bring costs down considerably. Let's say $5M in profits.
It's a competitive market and there is not yet enough experience how long web properties can retain their audience, thus valuation of future revenues drop quickly.
Now, it seems that if AOL doesn't expect significant growth for TechCrunch, $25-50M is in a right ballpark.
However, I still think that $180M for a regional Finnish newspaper with 300K audience is a risky bet. Time to read their financials to understand this.
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#128it's kinda funny....Techcrunch makes it a point that they don't accept press releases...and they announce their acquisition with a press release.
Arrington handed Armstrong his laptop on stage and had Tim press the "publish" button. Armstrong didn't write the post, let alone even read it before he hit publish, it seems. I think it was done by Techcrunch. Watch the video and you'll see.
Re: Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
#129Anyone know for how much $$$ ?
I've been privy to some secret acquisition terms in the past, and in most cases the speculation on the web had no connection to reality. When you make up numbers, they can get repeated until they gain credibility and drown out any genuine information about the deal, a disservice to the community.