Tweets accusation
Allen tweets the accusation that she was raped by Arrington:
https://twitter.com/JennAllen/status/322576945537753089
Sends letter to Allen
A law firm sends Allen a letter on behalf of Arrington (pdf here), addressing comments she made on Gawker alleging that he raped her and other women:
[…] Nor can there be any question as to your foregoing statements’ defamatory nature. Each such statement purports to describe facts that, if accepted by a reader as true, injure Michael’s reputation so “as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.”
Facebook accusation
Allen posts an accusation that Arrington threatened and abused her.
Last post on someone i’m completely over. I’ve never been lonelier in my entire life. To all my friends who loved me for who I am – thank you. Power hungry people, I loved Michael Arrington for 8+ years starting when i implemented Eurekster search at the time on Techcrunch in 2006 and throughout the years i didn’t know he cheated on me multiple times, then tells people it was me immediately after he did it. It hurts when you love someone borderline and they can’t feel anything at all for you, and threaten to murder you if you told anyone about the physical abuse – all for keeping his reputation. The emotional abuse was equally bad. On a positive note, it can’t get any worse than this and I can’t get myself of this bed.
Rejoins blog
Arrington announces that he has been ‘unfired’. He says he is not running the blog, and AOL has already killed one post:
So that was new. Being told “no,” that is.
He plans to post a couple of times a week:
There are tons of other venture capitalists writing regular guest posts for TechCrunch already. Just consider me one of those.
Tim Armstrong interview
Arrington interviews AOL CEO Armstrong at Disrupt SF:
You have tripled the stock price of AOL when everyone, me included, was calling this company dead a year ago. How did you do it?
Armstrong:
We basically had a three-pronged approach, one was operationally, you’ve seen us do a lot better, improve and beat expectations the last four quarters in a row, the second thing is really focus on products…the traditional AOL businesses as well as the new businesses [like Disrupt], the third thing was on the financial engineering side, we did a patent transaction, we bought back a significant amount of companies, we did a huge buyback last summer.
He says the company is focusing on consumers, advertisers, publishers, and subscribers, and making sure investors get a high return.
Zuckerberg interview
Arrington talks with Zuckerberg at Disrupt 2012 in his first interview after the Facebook IPO announcement. They discuss the stock price, ads, Facebook phone, and the mobile version vs the website. Arrington:
The stock has lost roughly half its value…if you could’ve done anything differently with hindsight?
Zuckerberg:
The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing…We’re going to execute this mission where we’re going to make the world more open and connected
Seesmic acquisition rumored $15m
The company doesn’t specify the price but notes market rumors. HootSuite CEO Holmes:
There’s been a lot of speculation on that, but we’re not commenting. Some have guessed in the $15 million range to the low millions, but we’re not releasing the number. However, the more Seesmic users we convert over to HootSuite users, the higher the price will be.
HootSuite acquires Seesmic
The companies don’t disclose valuation. Seesmic’s latest incarnation, as a social media cross-posting tool, is in line with HootSuite’s business. VentureBeat reports that Seesmic has 30,000-40,000 uniques a month and may be treated as a new product by HootSuite. HootSuite CEO Holmes:
I have always had a lot of respect for Seesmic’s CEO, Loïc Le Meur, and the role Seesmic has played in advancing social business. We are thrilled to welcome Seesmic’s users into the HootSuite family.
Kelman interview
Arrington is interviewed by the Redfin CEO for Starter Day. He talks about how TechCrunch got started:
I had no money, and somebody wanted to start a company with me…I started doing all this really formal research and I realized, I’m doing all this research, why not just post it on the internet?
Uber vs HailoCab
Arrington moderates a debate at LeWeb London between Kalanick and Pishevar of Uber and Valkin and Bregman from the London-based HailoCab app, including on market strategies and legal restrictions. Arrington:
Hailo’s clearly just a cheap knockoff.
Pishevar explains that HailoCab deals only with licensed cabs, and started on Nov. 1, 2011. He says passengers have already booked more than a million miles on London black cabs.
FrontBack seed round
Arrington, SV Angel, Seedcamp, and Hudson River Angels are among investors in the app, which creates composite images from the front and back cameras of a cellphone. The round raises a total of $910,000.
Disrupt NY interview
Arrington interviews Conway and Lee at the event. Conway says he is an executive investor in SV Angel and Lee is managing the fund.
But I have a huge vested interest…I get to come in and help entrepreneurs, I get to do what I enjoy
Lee responds to Arrington’s question over rumors the fund is looking to raise $400 million, saying it is looking at investment, but declines to give details:
We are exploring all options
Tech Crunch interview
Conway talks with Arrington at the Tech Crunch office to talk about trends in the tech industry.
There’s two big trends that we see that are going to become billion dollar industries, one of them is real-time data which would be Twitter and what we call the real-time ecosystem, which is really any company that employs crowd-sourcing or collective wisdom to create this new corpus of real-time data on the web, which is the most valuable data on the web.
He says Foursquare and Quora are also examples of real-time data, and clarifies SV Angel isn’t invested in Quora. Growth in Facebook and Twitter alone is enough to confirm a second trend:
The other mega-trend is that the web is becoming more social…the phenomenon is that consumers are willing to share more about themselves…this phenomenon is growing to create huge commerce opportunities on the web
Conrad interview
Arrington talks with About.me co-founder and CEO Conrad about the product. Arrington:
It’s a simple product on the front…but something about it is compelling
Conrad:
Because it is very simple
He explains that part of the product’s success was because it avoided evolving, as MySpace did by becoming a music sharing site and Facebook did by becoming a photo-sharing platform.
Startups Uncensored interview
Arrington chats with DocStoc founder Nazar about TechCrunch, his personal life, and mistakes he’s made.
When I worked for other people I always knew I wanted to start my own company.
CNN Money interview
Arrington acknowledges that he doesn’t know any black tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, despite covering the industry. Still, he says, the industry is based largely on merit:
It’s not a pure meritocracy here [but] you can become very successful based on your brain size and how you use it
Vinod Khosla interview
Arrington interviews Sun Microsystems co-founder Khosla at Startup Weekend about his view of the venture capital industry. Arrington:
You’re a badass dude in general…and if you don’t mind I’d like to spend most of our talk talking about how badass you are.
Khosla says he doesn’t identify as a VC:
I don’t have a very good view of venture capitalists, I refuse to call myself a venture capitalist…I think I’m a venture assistant out here to help entrepreneurs build companies. I’m not in the VC business because to me that means golf and parties.
Starts Uncrunched
Arrington starts a new blog after being removed from TechCrunch:
Now I’ve got a new pen, though. And a blank slate. Infinite choices, I get to choose my own path. All that jazz.
So as William Shatner would undoubtedly ask if I gave him another $149, what exactly am I going to do here at Uncrunched?
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.
Officially out
AOL announces that Arrington is officially out of the blog. Arrington:
It’s no longer a good situation for me to stay at TechCrunch. [It’s] a sad day for me.
AOL spokeswoman:
We love Mike and it was the right, amicable decision that we came to together. We’re super excited about our relationship with him going forward.
Siegler: It’s not looking good
Siegler writes on the blog that the uncertainty is affecting its future:
TechCrunch is on the precipice. As soon as tomorrow, Mike may be thrown out of the company he founded. Or he may not. No one knows. And if he is, he will be replaced by — well, again, no one knows. No one knows much of anything. Certainly no one at TechCrunch. This site is about to change forever and we’re in the total f-cking dark. I’ve been able to piece together little bits of information here and there, and it’s not looking good.
Part of the blog’s effectiveness depends on Arrington’s ability to break news, including on companies he is invested in:
Could TechCrunch survive without Mike Arrington? Probably. We’re doing so many pageviews now, and the machine is so profitable, that you can plug in other parts and it will run. But without him, it will not be the same.