Mike Arrington has reportedly been fired from AOL, which currently owns TechCrunch, the blog he founded. That was the response to his demand, on TechCrunch, that AOL grant the site complete editorial independence or sell it back to him and the original stakeholders. Things are very much up in the air as to what will happen now that he’s been canned, but on his personal Twitter account, Mr. Arrington is going about business as usual.
“TechCrunch Disrupt update – There will be well over 2,500 people attending next week, shattering our previous attendance record of 2,100,” he wrote this afternoon. Like a proud father unable to handle the custody arrangement in a divorce, Mr. Arrington continues to use the paternal “our” in reference to TC Disrupt.
During the day yesterday, Mr. Arrington tweeted out three stories from his former team. There is no pretense, of course, that everything is normal. “@BrianGupton really, there’s no way to script out what happened over the last week. seriously,” he wrote, in response to a suggestion that the entire drama had been staged.
Mr. Arrington did, of course, orchestrate a similar drama last year, when he published a story on the “Angelgate” controversy a week before he was scheduled to appear onstage with many of the same VCs he was accusing of collusion. You don’t have to be a fan of pro wrestling to see the similarities with this affair. Will Mr. Arrington, Tim Armstrong, and Arianna Huffington face off at TC Disrupt this coming week? Tune in to find out!
“Also, 700 hackers will be at Disrupt Hackathon starting tomorrow, all gunning to be the next GroupMe,” Mr Arrington tweeted while Betabeat was composing this post. One wonders how long Mr. Arrington will go on tweeting as if he is still running TechCrunch. Has his ability to post freely to the actual site been terminated since his Spartan ultimatum? Maybe he can reminisce with his ex-friend Jason Calacanis–who sued Mr, Arrington after the TechCrunch 50 conference the two started together was sold off to AOL–about what it’s like to lose your baby to an Armstrong.
