Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget has challenged journalism professor Dan Reimhold to a blog-off against BI’s pathologically prolific writer Joe Weisenthal, according to Poynter.
It all started when Mr. Reimhold, who teaches at the University of Tampa, wrote a mild blog post about how he would never teach his students to be like Mr. Read More
AOL will sell more than 800 patents to Microsoft in exchange for $1.056 billion in cash, the company announced today. The dial-up giant retained patents of 300 “core and strategic” technologies, which it will non-exclusively license to Microsoft in the same deal.
The auction for the patents began last fall, part of the company’s long term plan to “unlock value” for shareholders. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2012, and the company says it plans to return a significant portion of the proceeds to shareholders.
Meanwhile, WWD caught AOL and Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington at her book party for Kathy Freston (Ms. Freston introduced Ms. Huffington to her business partner Kenneth Lerer), to find out how she felt about about her growing influence at AOL. Read More
We can’t say we envy whoever’s behind the wheel of Patch, AOL’s network of hyperlocal news sites. With a torrent of bad press; a prettier, more popular sister in The Huffington Post, and executives resorting to (allegedly) defending the company in the Business Insider comments section, it’s likely Team Patch in need of a morale boost. But it’s hard to know how to make a generous statement of your confidence in the company without awakening some sales exec’s dormant inner frat boy. Read More
Scarlett O’Hara may have dramatically vowed to herself that she’d never go hungry again, but then again she didn’t live in the era of Match.com. According to a Business Insider article today, a young woman in New York named Jessica Sporty used the dating service in order to save on her grocery bills. You see, men would buy her expensive meals and dinners, and in return, all she had to do was go on a date with them.
What a very novel transactional process. Read More
Two wildly different takes on the same Newsweek newsstand figures suggest Tina Brown is as divisive a figure as she ever was.
Business Insider said the 50,000 average for the first half of 2011 means the weekly is “turning around.” Before she started it was around 39,000, and ad pages have doubled compared Read More
A forward-looking item over at The New York Times‘ DealBook today asks: Which companies could, possibly, follow The Huffington Post into the arms of some deep-pocketed acquirer?
The Times mentions a few potential candidates for hypothetical buyouts: Gawker Media, Glam Media and Business Insider.
To find out whether there was any substance behind buyout Read More
Following on The New York Times‘ story about tensions between Facebook and Goldman Sachs arising over the Wall Street firm’s decision to deny U.S. investors a chance to buy Facebook shares, Business Insider comes back with an additional bit of reporting that it says contradicts The Times’ account.
Whereas The Times’ Andrew Ross Read More
UPDATE: Fred Wilson responds below.
Prominent VC Fred Wilson is not pleased with Silicon Alley Insiders’ treatment of his beloved New York tech scene. Today he highlighted a new blog, We Are NY Tech, that he hopes will change the tenor of startup coverage.
“Unlike silly lists like the Business Insider ‘Coolest 100 People’ Read More
