Pinterest was launched in 2010, but that didn’t stop the fine folks at TechCrunch from giving Pinterest their “Crunchie” award for “2011 Startup Of The Year”. Why did Pinterest earn that recognition? From TechCrunch: “The reason? Crazy, crazy traffic and …

Following up with their company’s financial earnings being released this morning, Tim Armstrong, AOL CEO and Chairman, and Arte Minson, AOL CFO, took some time this morning to conduct a Q&A with the media about the implications of the Q4 …

The “four biggest voices” who left TechCrunch (Sarah Lacy’s words) have started PandoDaily, a new tech site aimed at covering start-ups that sounds, well, exactly like TechCrunch. Lacy is leading the charge, and the site will also feature writing from …

Last month, reports emerged that TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, who since TechCrunch was acquired by AOL, has actually been general manager of AOL’s technology properties, had handed in her resignation. Today, it’s official. She’ll be stepping down at the end …

Who would have ever thought that AOL purchasing TechCrunch wouldn’t go down as a completely smooth journey off into the sunset? If you follow tech journalism news, you know that the journey has been anything but smooth, with the biggest …

A couple weeks ago, it became official that TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is no longer a part of AOL, after (and before) much drama unfolded. TechCrunch, so far, is going along with most of the same writers,though columnist Paul Carr …

AOL and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington have officially parted ways, at least on an employer/employee basis, though the company will continue in its investment in Arrington’s “CrunchFund” . The official statement from AOL as posted on TechCrunch: “The TechCrunch acquisition …

The latest word on the TechCrunch/AOL saga is that TC founder Michael Arrington has been fired from the company and that AOL will not sell TechCrunch back, as he had requested. As previously reported, Michael Arrington presented two options to …

Next Media Animation, the Taiwanese animators known for producing animated video clips about various news topics in tech and pop culture, have put out a video about the whole TechCrunch/AOL ordeal. “NMA is a news agency and therefore we choose …

The TechCrunch drama continues, interestingly enough with a TechCrunch post from founder Michael Arrington himself. More here and here for some background. A year ago when it was revealed that AOL would be acquiring TechCrunch, a big deal was made …

Popular tech blog TechCrunch, which was acquired by AOL about a year ago appears to be in major turmoil, following news late last week that founder Michael Arrington is likely out of the company after launching CrunchFund, venture capital fund. …

Update: Arrington is “not employed by Aol” according to this report quoting a Huffington Post spokesperson. Update 2: Peter Kafka at AllThingsD is reporting that Arrington is indeed an AOL employee, though he no longer works for AOL’s Huffington Post …

Sometime over the last 24 hours TechCrunch launched a redesign of their popular blog. Apparently the design began back last fall, before AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch and suffered “innumerable twists and turns along the way“, according to Dave Feldman, product …

Business Insider has overtaken Mashable in unique visitors according to Compete. It seemed noteworthy when competing blog Mashable overtook TechCrunch as the more popular tech blog, and now Business Insider (whose tech section is technically Silicon Alley Insider) appears to …

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore tweeted that Monday was the biggest traffic day ever for the publication (in terms of unique visitors. Clearly, it stands to reason that the death of Osama bin Laden and the site’s tendency to show up …

Gmail Motion and Google Docs Motion top the list. “To use Gmail Motion, you’ll need a computer with a built-in webcam,” explains Gmail Product Manager Paul McDonald. “Once you enable Gmail Motion from the Settings page, Gmail will enable your …

AOL recently lost a couple of editors of its popular gadget blog Engadget. Now, an even bigger player in the company’s content strategy is leaving. President of AOL Media and Studios, David Eun told staff he is leaving the company in an email. The letter started:

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington hasn’t been afraid of pissing off AOL since the company acquired the popular tech blog late last year. 

Earlier this month, Arrington waged a blog war of sorts against fellow AOL tech blog Engadget, which drew a lot of media attention, and got other tech bloggers asking questions like, "How long will Mike Arrington possibly last as an AOL employee?"

Every so often, one of those "social media vs. blogs" discussions comes up. Questions like "is social media killing blogging?" gets asked. Time and time again, the answer is a resounding "no", but various pieces of news released this week seem to really drive that point home. 

Update: AOL has now officially announced its acquisition of TechCrunch for an undisclosed amount. TechCrunch will continue to operate independently as a wholly-owned AOL unit.

Twitter engineer Alex Payne tweeted over the weekend, "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)" Some took that to mean that Twitter was working on some new features for its own site, that would essentially render some popular third-party clients all but obsolete. The question is whether this is a legitimate concern for developers, or it has just been blown out of proportion. It could possibly be a combination of the two.

Update: According to TechCrunch, Google will be holding a special Chrome OS event on Thursday morning, where they will show off demos and give an overview of the product, now said to be launching next year.