AOL Purchases TechCrunch

AOL is trying to regain some of its influence online with the purchase of a number of assets this week including Techcrunch.com. TechCrunch is one of the more popular blogs online covering technology news and company announcements. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, was purchased for $40 million and will continue to operate as a separate entity. The announcement was made at TechCrunch’s conference TechCrunch Disrupt.

AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong has been hiring content writers and purchasing content provides to boost the companies exposure and revenues. The company currently owns Engadget which it purchased over 5 years ago. Other purchases this week included Think Labs which produces the popular Brizzly software and 5Min Media which provides online video content solutions.

TechCrunch currently reaches 9.2 million readers a month and over 30 million page views. AOL can sell advertising on the network to it’s current clients and possibly draw in new advertisers interested in the tech savvy demographic. TechCrunch owner Michael Arrington was ready to sell the company as scaling, hardware, and engineering troubles were not the reasons that he started the blog over 5 years ago.

The blog hopes to continue to be the same as it was before the purchase, after the purchase. Other AOL content properties include Switched, TUAW, and Download Squad. TechCrunch also operates other popular blogs CruchGear, MobileCrunch, and TechCrunchIT.

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