TechCrunch Succumbs To AOL

TechCrunch has announced that it has agreed with AOL’s acquisition offer. The deal was immediately closed after negotiations rumors leaked.

At TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference, its founder Michael Arrington revealed that the company did not have a choice but to rush through the announcement. Arrington later then shared the stage with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and jokingly asked the crowd if he should sign the contract or not. In the end, Arrington signed but the financial details of the deal were not divulged.

Founded in 2005, TechCrunch instantly became one of most influential news outlets in Silicon Valley. Compete.com, audience traffic tracker, estimates that TechCrunch attracts over 2 million visitors monthly.

In 2005, AOL acquired blog network Weblogs Inc. and picked up its tech blog Engadget. Some of the Weblogs sites have closed since the acquisition but a few remained successful such as Autoblog, TVSquad and The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Just like eHow creator Demand Media, AOL is buying and distributing content to defeat other contents that are optimized to do well in search engines. In addition, AOL has taken steps to improve its content quality. AOL is also planning to create news-related sites and has been sneaking journalists from BusinessWeek, New York Times and Washington Post among others.