It is being reported that CNN is in late stage talks to acquire social news and technology website Mashable for as much as $200m. If true it will be one of the last big independent blogs to be snapped up by a larger media owner. AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315m last year and in 2010 it also snapped up TechCrunch for around $30m.

Mashable pulls in a considerably larger audience than Techcrunch hence the speculated $200m price tag, which could herald a multimillion pound pay day for British founder Pete Cashmore. Read More »

The fallout from the AOL acquisition of Techcrunch continues as former writer, Sarah Lacy, launches a news site, called PandoDaily, which is being dubbed “TechCrunch 2.0 by some.

PandoDaily, which will focus almost exclusively on tech start-ups, launches today and is backed by a number of investors including TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, who left the site he founded in September unhappy (but richer) after the earlier sale to AOL. Read More »

Last year Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington sold his tech news business to AOL for around $30m, according to reports. Things went a bit rocky and very early on people were wondering how long he would last at AOL as he threw public punches at the media firm while ostensibly employed by it.

The answer was not much longer as Arrington. Earlier this month AOL parted company as this story details: Barry Diller Skewers AOL For Firing Michael Arrington. That was a Techcrunch story, by the way. It was reported everywhere including the New York Times. Read More »

AOL is to begin its next round of job cuts and it is being reported that as many as 900 could be lost. The cuts come on the heels of AOL’s $315m deal to buy the Huffington Post and the reorganisation that has followed.

Last week AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, while speaking at a conference in the US, said that there would definitely be “job changes”.  He said there was “no way around it, but we’ll do it thoughtfully”.  Many of the job cuts will hit India, which supports AOL US content operations. Read More »

No one saw this one coming. AOL has snapped up the biggest blog out there with the acquisition of The Huffington Post for $315m (£195m).

The is an audacious move by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and is part of his vision to recast AOL as a content business. Read More »

AOL has purchased four-month-old Silicon Valley start-up About.me just four days after launch.

What does About.me offer?
The site allows users to create an attractive splash page pulling together information from social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter. There’s also a personal analytics dashboard so you can track how many people are looking at your profile and where they come from.

The concept taps into an increasing desire to have more control over our online profile and present it in a more appealing way than platforms like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, with their limited design options, allow. Read More »

What a combo. A beleaguered President Barrack Obama is teaming up with a beleaguered AOL. Together the pair might just be stoppable. No wait that can’t be right.

But seriously folks, ahead of the key mid-term US elections Obama is to appear on AOL tomorrow in an effort to get the president’s vote out (let’s hope that idea doesn’t backfire) and to signal the relaunch of AOL.com’s homepage. Read More »

At what is called the Silicon Roundabout, at Old Street in East London, a brightly lit office space called TechHub beckons from the street, to technology start-ups to come on in, and have a place to work.

The working hub offers membership to technology companies looking for a place to hotdesk in London, at affordable prices. When it opened, the founders promised a communal type of atmosphere where networking would be as valuable as popping in to check your email while you are in London for the day. Read More »

It is distressing sometimes to see how out of touch some people in the mainstream in the media are. Andrew Marr, the BBC political commentator and presenter, at the weekend ranted about bloggers calling them “socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy…”. No really, tell us what you think.

In his speech at the Cheltenham Literature Festival he also accused them (us, you, me) of being anonymous. Having blogged for years in various parts of the blogosphere I certainly wish at times I had been anonymous. It would have got of me out of a few scrapes. Read More »

UPDATED 0900 – AOL has confirmed it is to buy TechCrunch, following earlier reports, for what is said to be between $25m and $30m although there is no confirmation of the sale price.

According to Reuters AOL has paid $30m for the technology news site with an earlier report on the San Francisco Chronicle website saying AOL told insiders that it is “only paying $25m for TechCrunch.
Read More »