You know every once in a while you come across news about your company and it turns out your boss is no longer your boss anymore. If you’re me this probably happens to you every three months.
Anyways this morning I read in the media that Arianna Huffington (who I think used to be my boss) gained more control within Aol and then subsequently read that actually she had been “demoted.” Okay truth please guys?!
Well, because no one ever tells us anything because we’ll publish it, I dug around and found out that we (TechCrunch) are no longer a part of Huffington Post Media Group, and neither is Engadget, Moviephone, Stylist, AOL Video, AOL.com and TUAW.
Additionally, divisions of the Huffington Post originally folded into Aol like tech and communications will now be re-instated into the Huffington Post, and the HuffPost property will remain an independent entity within Aol, sort of like the Basque region of Spain.
Business Insider says that all the non-HuffPost blogs will now report to a man named Jay Hirsch. While I don’t know any Jay Hirsch, I do know a Jay Kirsch — a non-editorial Aol executive who is the SVP & General Manager of the Autos/ Finance/ Industry/ Jobs/ Real Estate division of Aol and an awesome writer. No really, he is a great writer.
Even though Jay is an aforementioned great writer, he will be looking for an Editorial Manager to fill a role under him and deal directly with each individual site, according to sources. Kirsch wouldn’t comment. Hirsch, whoever he is, also wasn’t available for comment.
What does this mean for TechCrunch AND YOU? Well I’m assuming we’ll be saying Jay or whoever’s name instead of Arianna’s when we call Aol to change our System Passwords once a quarter. Arianna was rarely involved in our day-to-day anyways (well except for that one time) and now we’ll have no Aol editorial oversight, at least that we know of.
AND YOU? Well it probably doesn’t mean very much to you at all.
AOL is a global advertising-supported Web company, with display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products. The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming. History of Aol: AOL was founded in the early 1980’s as Control Video Corp, with an online service, Gameline, for the Atari 2600 console. ...
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