AOL-TechCrunch: What Happens Next

AOL bought America's third-biggest tech blog and two other start-ups yesterday and signaled that the shopping spree will continue. But even as AOL chief Tim Armstrong and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced the $30 million acquisition, AdAge wondered how TechCrunch's take-no-prisoners approach will mesh with a huge publicly owned company like AOL.

Arrington says TechCrunch will operate as an AOL subsidiary and keep its distinctive style, which has made it a powerhouse of tech reporting but has also made Arrington more than a few enemies—including Yahoo's CEO, who told him to f*** off earlier this year. Arrington says he'll stick with the site for a long time, and AOL has locked him down for three years, but "place a bet on how long before he gets itchy feet and needs to build something new," Jemima Kiss writes at the Guardian. And once that happens, AdAge notes, the question becomes: What happens to personality-driven blogs when that personality wanders off into the wilderness?
(More Tim Armstrong stories.)