From TechCrunch:

“The reason? Crazy, crazy traffic and growth. In November, the site had reportedly seen a 2,000% increase in pageviews, according to comScore. That wasn’t year-over-year growth, mind you, but the increase Pinterest had seen since June. At 421 million pageviews, the site had already surpassed more established players, like Etsy, for example.”

Another classic award-winner for Best New Something-or-Other was Shelby Lynne, who won a Best New Artist Grammy after 13 years and 6 albums. Go figure.

Other great Pinterest reads:

Video: How To Use Pinterest (Tutorial)

Pinterest 101: How Can Geeks Use It?

Pinterest Invasion by Men Continues Unabated

Pinterest Top Five Most Repinned Items

Pinterest Traffic Spikes

Dear Pinterest: Can We Talk?

Armstrong spoke at length about AOL’s marketing strategies (it wasn’t their fault this was mostly what they talked about – this is what reporters were asking about) and how Project Devil, their advertising platform, is changing advertisements into actual site content. Mentioning how companies like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever have already adopted Project Devil, Armstrong said, “We believe most of the clients in the world, through their agencies, could extend their content through advertising.” He continued, “Project Devil is an enterprise system that would go inside the holding companies where we’re taking our software and user-interface and basically white labeling it for the holding companies.”

Armstrong also talked about the success of Patches, AOL’s platform for providing local news coverage to individual areas. Although it wasn’t mentioned in the press conference earlier today he did confirm that it had been an overall success thus far. Similar to his explanation for AOL’s general success, he said Patches has been done well because of their organizational strategy and sales teams. AOL has implemented 863 Patches overall, each of which they bunch into bundles of 30 to assess the quality and success of each Patch.

When addressing how Patches became profitable, Minson added, “We don’t want Patches to be a success based on an individual basis because we could theoretically muscle any Patch into being profitable.” He said that the true value of Patches “should be considered within Patches’ overall success.”

Eventually, someone was going to bring up the big jaundiced bruise on AOL that is TechCrunch and the defection of employees that occurred last year. Deflecting the suggestion that the news site was in “chaos,” Armstrong redirected the focus to TechCrunch’s “tremendous year” and pointed out some highlights like the conference they hosted in Beijing and the upcoming Crunchie Awards. “Chaos around TechCrunch,” he said, “is a limited factor because the site has acquired a lot of value.” He went on to explain how TechCrunch has added more talent to their staff and has been receiving “strong interest” from advertisers.”

Lacy is leading the charge, and the site will also feature writing from Michael Arrington, MG Siegler and Paul Carr.

In a post by Lacy, called “Why I Started PandoDaily,” Lacy says:

We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle. That sounds simple but it’ll be incredibly hard to pull off. It’s not something we accomplish on day one or even day 300. It’s something we accomplish by waking up every single day and writing the best stuff we can, and continually adding like-minded staffers who have the passion, drive and talent to do the same.

Of course, there’s the caveat that if someone calls me tomorrow and offers $1 billion, I might cave. I do have investors after all, and everyone has a price. And I’ve been around enough entrepreneurs to know the journey changes you in ways you can’t expect. I’m as aware as anyone this resolve might soften over time.

Arrington adds on his Uncrunched blog:

Pando Daily has a single overriding goal – to be the paper of record for Silicon Valley. That means every story of importance will be covered with an unbiased look at the facts. Along with a healthy dose of the analysis that you’ve already come to expect from her and the people she works with.

There’s a big void in Silicon Valley right now, and I believe readers are aching for something to fill that void. Pando Daily is going to do that.

Speaking about TechCrunch in a video interview with AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, Lacy said, “I think it’s on a downward path obviously or would have stayed. They’re not breaking news as much as they used to be…”

It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how the new site competes with the established TechCrunch, which does still retain some of its writers from the pre-AOL days.

They’re also going to have a monthly series of events (with fireside chats).

Arrington’s CrunchFund, by the way, is also an investor in PandoDaily. Other investors include: Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Chris Dixon, Saul Klein, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Jordan, Matt Cohler, Greylock Discovery Fund, Accel’s Seed Fund, Menlo Ventures Talent Fund, Lerer Ventures, SV Angels and Ooga Labs.

One more interesting aspect of PandoDaily is that it says it will honor embargos to put stories in its “PandoTicker,” but will require something exclusive for the main blog part. TechCrunch has been known to break an embargo or two in the past, under Arrington. Granted, Arrington was very up front about this in a post called “Death to the Embargo“.

It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out. My guess is that it will work pretty well, given the fame its writers already have within the industry.

Today, it’s official. She’ll be stepping down at the end of the year. TechCrunch Editor Erick Schonfeld wrote his goodbye in the form of a TechCrunch post. “I am truly sorry to see her go. She is an amazing business partner and a rare talent. Just one example: Last year, when Heather was negotiating the final deal terms with AOL to purchase TechCrunch, she ran the conference during the day without a hiccup, and then literally stayed up all night to get the deal done in time for it to be announced on stage the next day,” he wrote.

“AOL GM Jay Kirsch, who oversees Autos, Finance, and Industry on the business side, will be adding Tech to his responsibilities,” Schonfeld noted. “Editorially, TechCrunch will remain independent under me. (Editorial and business groups are separate at AOL).”

On the post, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington commented, “It’s like watching the movie Titanic. You know exactly how it all ends, but you keep hoping it won’t.”

AOL is probably loving comments like that, especially being an investor in Arrington’s CrunchFund.

Arrington also wrote a lengthy post about the situation beginning with, “I’m so angry.”

He goes on to sing plenty of praise for Harde, rehash previous AOL/TechCrunch drama, imply that everything is falling apart because of Arianna Huffington’s ego, and say that he believes AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will still figure everything out and “save the day”.

He also throws in a reminder that he’s a shareholder in AOL.

“Other than dial up, TechCrunch is/was the most profitable and fastest growing business unit inside of Aol,” he wrote. “That, ultimately, is why everything fell apart.”

If you follow tech journalism news, you know that the journey has been anything but smooth, with the biggest bump in the road being that whole Crunch Fund, Michael Arrington ordeal earlier this year.

Since then, TechCrunch has lost some of its writers (though popular reporter MG Siegler still contributes a bit. He’s had 4 articles on TechCrunch this month).

Now, reports are out that CEO Heather Harde is quitting after disagreements with The Huffington Post, which is running the AOL content show these days. Henry Blodget at Business Insider says he’s heard from a source that Harde has handed in her resignation, but that AOL management is still trying to get her to stay.

It’s been quite interesting to see how the tech blog, which pretty much set the bar for the tech startup news niche seems to be coming apart at the seams since purchased by the online media giant.

That’s not to say that TechCrunch has done a poor job since then, by any means. They still have plenty of the names that have helped build the site into what it has become, and if I said I’ve seen better coverage of the tech startup industry, I’d be lying.

But how long will this last? That’s the real question. With the internal struggles that have been publicized (who knows what hasn’t been?), one has to wonder if AOL is going to run a much-respected tech site into the ground.

Here’s some of what people are saying about the Heather Harde news on Twitter:

I haven’t seen much in the way of praise for AOL. Unless you count something like this:

Everything seemed to be going pretty well with TechCrunch before AOL entered the equation. I’m sure more than a few people are still wondering if Uncrunched will become the new TechCrunch.

Now, Michael Arrington has found a new blogging home. He started “Uncrunched“. In a post titled, “What exactly am I doing here at Uncrunched?” he says:

I’m going to do the same thing I’ve been doing since 2005. I’m going to write about startups, and the people who build them, and the people who fund them, and the people who use them. I’m going to break stories and I’m going to write my opinion, and I’m going to write whatever the hell else I feel like in between. If people want to read what I write, yay. If they don’t, I can live with that too.

So, basically, it sounds like he’ll be competing with TechCrunch, and one might wonder if there will be any guest posts from his friends popping up. Could this simply turn into the next TechCrunch? What if more writers follow Paul Carr’s example and leave the AOL-owned tech blog, only to do the same thing with Arrington again at Uncrunched? There’s nothing indicating this is going to happen yet, but it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

It doesn’t look like that’s the route Arrington’s taking this time, unless he changes his mind:

Still, in the comments of his blog post, Arrington says he misses TechCrunch “a lot”.

TechCrunch itself (surprisingly) hasn’t talked about Uncrunched a whole lot so far. They did run an article pointing out its launch, where Arrington’s choice of comment system was essentially the main focus of the piece. Writer Mike Butcher did tweet the following:

It’s going to be interesting to see just how the “Uncrunched” story unfolds, and how much Arrington will be blogging himself. If he’s going to be breaking stories, as he says, that does make him a direct competitor with TechCrunch, but at the same time, how can one man compete with the blog’s whole staff?

“The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future. Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund. Erick Schonfeld has been named the editor of TechCrunch. TechCrunch will be expanding its editorial leadership in the coming months.”

It’s worth noting that the TechCrunch post which shares this statement uses quotations aren’t “Deciding” in the title “‘Deciding’ to Move On”.

Some other TechCrunch writer responses:

Kara Swisher has posted yet another leaked internal company memo, this from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. The part about TechCrunch reads:

“Finally, I’d like to announce that Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund. TechCrunch continues to be a part of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. AOL will maintain its initial investment in Michael Arrington’s fund and AOL Ventures will oversee our investment in the fund.”

For more background on the events that led up to this, view past coverage here.

And as a bonus, let’s review that Next Media Animation video one more time:

Schonfeld was already co-editor of TechCrunch, so it stands to reason that the site will remain relatively similar to how it’s always been, though that part about expanding editorial leadership in the coming months might have more bearing on that, depending on just what is in store.

As previously reported, Michael Arrington presented two options to AOL: either reaffirm editorial independence of TechCrunch as “promised at the time of acquisition” or sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

According to an article from Fortune, it appears that AOL went with option C: canning Arrington and keeping TechCrunch. Dan Primack reports:

Instead, Fortune has learned that AOL executives have decided to terminate Arrington. It is unclear how this will officially occur. Maybe a pink slip. Maybe Arrington submits a (public?) letter of resignation. Maybe Tim Armstrong simply gives Arrington a phone call, and he quickly dashes off a note to TechCrunch employees on his iPad.

In other words, the ending has been written but much of the final chapter remains blank. This includes the fate of CrunchFund, which still includes that pesky AOL commitment (which it technically could default on, but that would lead to all sorts of other problems).

Of course, as Primack also admits, there’s no telling if the decision is final. There has been so much back and forth here, who knows? Kara Swisher, who has been very vocal in her criticism of the whole ordeal, is skeptical:

Either way, the story up to now has already been immortalized by Taiwanese animation:

Note: The title of this article is a reference to Friday the 13th Part IV: The FInal Chapter, which as any horror fan knows, was not even close to being the final chapter.

“NMA is a news agency and therefore we choose the most popular and trending stories each day to animate,” NMA’s Jenna Manula tells WebProNews. “After gathering a list of topical stories, we narrow down our choices to which events are lacking video footage. The power of our animations lie in the ability of our animators to recreate the scene of an event and to provide a visual to our audience where one is not available.”

Each of their videos takes about three hours to produce, she says.

In the video, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington appears to be portrayed as some kind of wizard, and is eventually kicked out the door (literally) by Arianna Huffington.

Yesterday, Arrington wrote a post on TechCrunch in which he suggested that AOL either reaffirms “editorial independence” to TechCrunch as “promised at the time of acquisition” last year or sell TechCrunch back to its original shareholders.

We have yet to see any real response from AOL to this.

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 about how TechCrunch would continue to operate as it always had, free from editorial oversight by AOL. That would mean TechCrunch could say whatever nasty things it wanted to about AOL and get away with it.

Arrington writes in a fresh post, “As of late last week TechCrunch no longer has editorial independence. Some argue that the circumstances demanded it. I disagree. Editorial independence was never supposed to be an easy thing for Aol to give us. But it was never meaningful if it shatters the first time it is put to the test.”

It does still appear to be editorially independent enough to let air all of this internal turmoil for the masses, including this very post by Arrington, so I guess that’s something.

According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, who has been very vocal about her disdain for the whole mess, says that Arrington has reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to try and buy TechCrunch back. She says her sources say that he would have to pull together the funding to do so, and that things are currently at a “stalemate”.

In Arrington’s post, he proposes two options to AOL:

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

“If Aol cannot accept either of these options, and no other creative solution can be found, I cannot be a part of TechCrunch going forward,” signaling that this could be his last TechCrunch post.