I’ll begin by saying that I’m not an AOL fan.
I never liked their litter-producing mass mailed floppies, CDs and DVDs. I didn’t like their AOL chatrooms and boards that reeked of BBS era community behavior.
TechCrunch was acquired by AOL for allegedly $25 million and I like that, so let me explain why.
There comes a time when one’s project or business venture becomes too large to handle. Especially with technology magazines or communities that rely on a constant flow of content and that rely either on advertising revenue or contributions, problems of technical or financial nature can put a brake or terminate the creative activity.
In other words, how is a free medium going to be sustained indefinitely?
A lot of reaction to the acquisition was negative. People that have no clue about what it takes to run a business started bitching about TechCrunch “selling out”. It’s easy to criticize when one hasn’t lived a day in the shoes of a person who has had the “luxury” of fighting off an army of issues, all while trying to be creative.
Back in January, I too faced server issues with the DomainGang project; productivity dropped while I tried to resolve them as best as I could. For a newcomer to the publishing game, problems can be intimidating. Still, thanks to moral support and a few sponsors I was able to resolve the technical issues and resume being creative and productive.
I’m happy for the sale of TechCrunch to AOL. They deserve the incredible financial and technological infusion. They also seem committed to their reader base with regards to how they will be approaching AOL in the future, in articles and scoops.
Everyone deserves to taste success and happiness in life; it’s part of our human nature to expect and enjoy receiving rewards for our effort.
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