Not content with her paidContent scoop on Friday, AllThingsD's Kara Swisher said she has been told that TechCrunch has held acquisition talks with AOL over buying the tech site for $20-30m. TechCrunch chief executive Heather Harde issued a big fat "we don't comment on rumours" comment.
Photo by michaelarrington on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
But Swisher insists talks have been ongoing for up to eight weeks, and that TechCrunch has already spoken, unsuccessfully, to several other big media firms about acquisition deals. AOL would be a good home, she notes, sitting alongside other titles like Engadget.
Whatever happens with that deal, that price of $20-30m is peanuts for this kind of company. That's probably what the BBC spends in taxi fares in a year (if you read the Daily Mail) but has a weight of influence that even these publishers themselves are only just starting to explore through events, which make far more money than the ad-supported content. Whether the deal comes off though, we'll have to wait and see.
• Update: Jeff Buzzmachine Jarvis isn't rightly impressed by the AOL potential: "AOL is where things go to die". I'm inclined to agree. Does Bebo still have a pulse?
