Michael Arrington, the high-profile TechCrunch blogger, is at it again. This time he’s ranting that blogs should join together and crush tech site CNet. What’s gotten Arrington’s ire? He feels there’s a whole lot of money headed for blogs and the cash is likely to disrupt the way things are done – like TechCrunch being the blog promoter.
“Well, all this money flowing into the blogosphere is disrupting the complicated and emotional, but also stable way things are done,” Arrington said. The money is likely to change the landscape, turn bloggers away from the Blog War.
Arrington, who’s job is promoting the next venture-capital deal, is telling bloggers to turn away from the corruption of individual cash-infusion and instead combine into what he calls a “big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business.”
Now, crushing CNET’s not that difficult; it’s likely to implode from all the stock option scandals and financial missteps. However, telling bloggers to join hands is like hearding cats.
What sort of reaction is Arrington getting to his manifesto? Henry Blodget, the Wall Street analyst turned blogger at Silicon Alley Insider, says the idea’s interesting, but he’ll wait and see. SAI is one of the blogs singled-out by Arrington as rushing into the arms of the money men.
“We’ll continue to raise our $2-$3 million or $3-$5 million or whatever, set our sky-high valuation benchmark, and explore our (many!) other strategic alternatives,” Blodget writes.
“He’s wrong on all counts,” writes Rafat Ali at PaidContent. Ali denied he’s planning to sell the site, which reports on content deals.
What’s behind Arrington’s Cumbaiya moment? It couldn’t be all this cash potentially going to dozens of blogs could divert attention from TechCrunch and a possible $100 million sale to CNET?
Post originally written by Ed Sutherland
Jacob Masters is the editor of Pro Blogging News. He has worked in the tech and legal industry for over a decade. His goal in life is to increase the internet knowledge base one article at a time. He also likes to push the boundaries through his city wide evening excursions as a guerrilla gardener.
