It’s been quite a year for shake-up among prominent tech blogs. None have been more highly publicized than Michael Arrington leaving TechCrunch after it was acquired by AOL. A handful of others from TechCrunch also stepped away, or pulled back to some extent.
Actually, Arrington continues to spread some juicy gossip about what’s going on with AOL. On his Uncrunched blog, he says that rumor has it that Aol is looking for a new president for its Huffington Post Media Group.
“The executive will report to Aol CEO Tim Armstrong, apparently, not Huffington,” he writes. “Currently Arianna Huffington runs both the business and editorial sides of the group. Running a business is fairly new to her. Before the Aol Acquisition Eric Hippeau was the CEO, but he resigned just before the Aol deal was closed.”
“By far the most interesting part of all this, though, is it’s not clear that Arianna Huffington is aware that the new position will report to Tim Armstrong, not Huffington,” he says. “Whatever happens, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting my old job back.”
There have been some notable departures from Mashable as well, including Editor Ben Parr, who announced his transition just a few weeks ago.
There have been plenty of other changes throughout the industry over the course of the year, but these have been some of the more publicized.
Now, it’s ReadWriteWeb that’s going through some changes. Last month, arguably the blog’s most recognizable author Marshall Kirkpatrick announced that he’d be stepping away from his full-time gig at ReadWriteWeb, though he’ll still be contributing.
Today, news comes from ReadWriteWeb itself that it is being acquired by Say Media. RWW founder Richard MacManus writes:
I’m thrilled to announce that ReadWriteWeb has been acquired by SAY Media, a digital publishing company headquartered in San Francisco. ReadWriteWeb will anchor SAY Media’s growing Technology channel, which reaches more than 75 million global consumers each month.
ReadWriteWeb is going to get bigger and even better. Our plans include widening ReadWriteWeb’s editorial scope and expanding our team. That starts from today, with the addition of SplatF’s Dan Frommer to our team as an editor-at-large. We will also be doing a re-design, utilizing the sophisticated designers at SAY Media. With SAY’s technology and services, we’ll be able to scale ReadWriteWeb in ways previously unavailable to us. So I’m very excited about our team joining SAY Media. We’re going to take ReadWriteWeb to the next level!
Frommer tweeted:
@fromedome
Dan FrommerHappy to be joining @RWW as Editor-At-Large, under its new ownership at SAY Media. I will continue to write @SplatF. http://t.co/d1PP5vTS
1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto
@fromedome
Dan Frommer@benbowersgp Thank you. I’ll be writing, not editing. But either way, it’s going to be super. 1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto
MacManus and Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez put together this video:
SAY: Welcomes ReadWriteWeb from SAY Media on Vimeo.
“As part of SAY Media’s portfolio of owned and operated media properties,ReadWriteWeb will take advantage of the company’s proprietary technology platform, experienced ad sales team, and world-class design expertise to scale its business to reach more technology enthusiasts and decision-makers,” the company says in its press release. “Under SAY’s guidance, the site will continue to evolve through design and user experience innovations that align with SAY’s Clean Campaign vision, and also expand its editorial scope to appeal to a wider array of technology consumers.”
Say Media’s other tech properties include: Android and Me, Gear Patrol, gdgt, SplatF and TechDirt.
Say Media, which gets about 650,000 uniques per month in the U.S. (Quantcast), is looking to go public. Sanchez is quoted as saying, “Next year’s about how do we get ready to go public.”
According to TechCrunch, Say Media paid $5 million for ReadWriteWeb.