At the beginning it looked like Arrington simply wanted to go back to investing since that’s how he got into this blogging business in the first place and even more so recently when he put money into a number of startups.
The way AOL is going about the news from today however, is a lot less clear. AOL had committed Arrington for three years as part of the TechCrunch acquisition which means he’s still got about two years to go but if AOL wanted him out of TC, they could be shifting him aside to another arm outside of the Huffington media group.
Here’s a summary by Dan Primack at Fortune:
It told the NYT that Arrington would still have a (reduced) role with the site, and continue reporting directly to Arianna Huffington. Then AOL said he would report to AOL Ventures. Today it says that he is no longer employed by the company, but can continue contributing to TechCrunch as an unpaid blogger. In other words, AOL is acting like AOL typically acts: Scattershot.
It’s been less than 24 hours so the flurry of news is still coming in and even news out of AOL itself isn’t clear. Nobody seems to have a straight story to tell.
Meanwhile, not a peep from TechCrunch but a monster rant from Kara Swisher.
[update] Paul Carr has his say on the matter. Yes, AOL screwed up in announcing the CrunchFund.
AuliaSays 