Will Uncrunched Become the New TechCrunch?

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 quit in dramatic fashion. He’s already got a new startup with backing from Crunchfund, which kicked off this whole ordeal to begin with.

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?