And here comes the big news. TechCrunch has actually been acquired by AOL. Here is the official post authored by Tim Armstrong on TC that also comes with the whole press release. Looks like AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong is surely on a shopping spree as AOL just bought Web Video Service 5 Min for over $50Mn and now TechCrunch network for an undisclosed price (rumored to be around $40Mn).

From my own perspective, i would have liked TechCrunch to remain independent and i reckon, they could grow it over $100Mn of worth for sure. The biggest advantage of staying independent is that you don’t need to bother about corporate relationships too much while writing posts that are sensitive in nature or break disruptive secrets (angelgate?). Change in ownership may affect that uniquely aggressive style of reporting. However, AOL also bought Weblogs Inc. in the past and that has hardly made any difference to Engadget or any other blog or its style of reporting so hopefully,  we may not notice any difference in TechCrunch reporting as well.

But one thing that’s out of limelight is what Jason Calacanis, Mahalo’s founder has to say about this deal. As we all know, Jason Calacanis has had deep relations with both the parties involved in the deal here. It was Jason Calacanis who created Weblogs Inc. and did that first-ever deal(worth $25Mn) of selling a blogging empire to AOL Inc. And it was the same Jason Calacanis who collaborated with Mike Arrington to set the foundation for startup launch event TechCrunch50.

Eventually, Internal conflicts started breeding and Calacanis got thrown out and TechCrunch50 got  a relaunch as TechCrunch Disrupt. On paper, if TechCrunch50 ceased to exist, Calacanis, who had equal authority on TechCrunch50 brand as Mike had, had no reasons to ask Arrington for awarding equal authority on TC Disrupt as well, but that’s on paper.

In actual, almost everyone who remains plugged in to startup world knew that TechCrunch Disrupt was just a name-change for already popular TechCrunch50 event, mainly to corner Calacanis and avoid any liabilities to him in case TechCrunch gets acquired. As tech events had become an important part of TechCrunch’s revenue machine, it was actually an evil-planned move by Arrington to sideline Jason Calacanis and eat the largest pie all alone.

When Jason heard about the rumor of TC acquisition, he tweeted

Aol is making big mistake if they buy @techcrunch. They cant keep a liability like @arrington around as public company+w/o mike it’s nothing

To an extent, Jason was correct as it’s mighty hard for any loyal TC follower(me included) to imagine Arrington being governed by someone else (Tim?) but now, it’s already a fact that TC has gone AOL so only time can tell what’s up next.

After the news of TechCrunch acquisition broke out, Jason tweeted…

It is now complete: @arrington stole @techcrunch50 from me, sold to AOL & laughed in my face. I will have my revenge:

On his blog, Jason wrote his frustration out…

Mike Arrington double crossed me,
left me for dead to make a quick buck
He stole from me, and my family.

On the birth of my daughter you didn’t call
You sent no flowers or tidings of AOL.
Three months later you laughed in my face
While you explained how you would screw me.

I will have my revenge, in this life
*not* the next.

I’m coming, and you will learn what
a lack of loyalty and honor brings sir.
I will not rest until vengeance is mine.

Personally speaking, i tend to agree with Jason’s school of ethics more than often, whether it be about Facebook or any other company and with the kind of picture that i have about Michael Arrington(after being a close follower of him since late 2007),  I voice my support for Jason and wish may Arrington get the taste of his own medicine, someday !

To be factual,its almost impossible for anybody to find such a worthy domain name  now(if there would still be any such unclaimed domain name,domain registrars would rather get those themselves before anyone else finds it out).

These four mentioned domains have been sold for a total of $4.5 Mn within past three months only,with latest being Toys.com which recently got auctioned for nearly $1.25Mn.Honestly,i haven’t been a positive promoter of such deals as brands are built with ‘Quality of Service’ and not with a mere ‘domain’.

A ‘super-common’ domain may add to your service by making your brand ‘easy to remember’,adding some SEO effect as well but nothing more than that.What matters is the ‘Quality of service’(QOS) and one can definitely think of a less-common domain,and invest that million dollars in improving the QOS.

From an owner’s perspective,a premium domain is definitely an invaluable asset,even if the company/service heads for a deadpool.The company can end their services with good memories at the end(that they made good amount of money out of the last thing left to them).

Thanks Domain Name Wire & Robin

I strongly discourage lofty domain resales,in the sense that brands are built with quality of service and not a rememberable name(that helps to an extent but not at all necessary),the latest news from domain resale industry is a lot astounding.

In the days of recession,when companies are struggling to procure funds for survival,here is a decade old publicly traded travel site called Travelzoo,which has just announced acquisition of Fly.com for whopping $1.8Mn.

According to Travelzoo

“Fly.com will launch a new travel search engine within the next few weeks that will help you find
the best travel options. Please visit us again soon.”

The only possibility here is that Travelzoo is making a lot more money that they presumed they will and therfore they have gone a step ahead in expending their reserves a lot more loosely.In recent past,there has been few other expensive domain resales of vibrators,and many others

We’ve always considered Killerstartups,a startup featuring website,an intelligent player in its arena not only because it monetizes its readership effectively through advertisements but also because it proposes a plan that’s lucrative from a startup’s perspective and brings Killerstartups $500/month from every premium customer(or startup).

And they’ve shown quite a catalytic growth in the past two years.They’re currently bringing more than a million uniques every month and have been effectively monetizing their services as well.

But today itself,they’ve commited the unexpected(and equally immaturish)….

They have acquired Startups.com for nearly $0.5 Mn…

Although some level of SEO benefits follow with such domains but with $0.5 Mn,they could have funded a cluster of seed companies(they themselves are an output of just $2,50,000 of Angel’s money).And if domain names would have mattered so much then Search.com would have been the most popular search destination and not “Google.com”.

We’ve earlier written about such events titled “5 most expensive domain resales” but we’re more than amazed to see such an acquisition happening at an economic crunch situation.

Today,startups are finding hard to survive,cutting their expenses and laying off staff just to save money and prolong their survival,Killerstartups has shown clear immaturity,simply burning up half a millions for practically nothing.

How could folks running Killerstartups forget that it’s about the Quality of Service that makes a service HIT and not the domain name.

But then if folks have got excess of money in their pockets,they will be keen to find out a way to blow it up as well….

MyHeritage, one of the world’s most popular family websites has today announced the acquisition of family social network Kindo for an undisclosed acquisition amount.

MyHeritage is based in Bnei Atarot,Israel and has raised more than $9 million of funding from Accel and Index Ventures.

MyHeritage has more than 25 million members worldwide and 260 million profiles under its belt.It is available in 25 languages at this moment and is known for its powerful technology that helps families research their history and stay connected, including Smart Matching and automatic photo tagging.

MyHeritage is definitely a BIGGER player than Kindo then why this acquisition..?

Every startup is small-sized in the begininng but gains population with time and money infused in it.Kindo has its roots in europe(sweden,spain,UK,germany….) which is still an area where Myheritage lacks prominance hence this acquisition will definitely help MyHeritage gain a status of “Ubiquitous prominance”.

MyHeritage has its vision to be the ‘Facebook for families‘ and with this acquisition,their vision certainly looks achievable.As part of this acquisition,MyHeritage will also establish new commercial operations in London. 

Below is the press-release document for Kindo’s acquisition by MyHeritage

Update : Some information has been omitted as requested by Myheritage’s official…

It certainly takes a lot of guts to even think of competing in a market(we mean,online search industry),which is already been over-saturated and even bigger guts to challenge the ‘Titan of Internet Industry‘ on its homeground.
‘Cuil’ was in the limelight much before it’s month old release(Launch date : 27th July) for solely one reason…they were openly challenging the ‘Whale of Search Industry’ and were claiming to make searching even more intense,effective,deeper and gruelling.

Whoever has tasted this ‘shouting kid’ in the past month must not have even thought of making ‘cuil’ their ‘new’ homepage rather than ‘Google’.And according to us,the ‘victims’ and the ‘criminals’ are the same in this case.(we mean,’cuil’ itself)

Considering the results that ‘cuil’ is showing up(both quantitatively and qualitatively),the innovation in displaying the results,and the time it has been there as a live service(just about a month),it certainly seems to be a “Promising” search destination.But the comparisons with a “decade old search engine” made all the efforts of ‘cuil’ appear so tiny(or rather dumb)

If ‘Live’(again,decade old) is compared with ‘cuil’,the relevancy of results with complex keyword searches such as “tetra”(as in ‘mobile radio technology’),cuil stands out a clear winner between the two.

So,what’s next for ‘cuil‘…..

We expect an acquisition by Microsoft….and here’s why we suspect this deal…

Possible reasons :

• Cuil challenges ‘Google’ and looks promising as well…what it needs is a BIG support(in every possible sense)…All these factors go in favour of Microsoft
• Microsoft desperately needs a new “improved” search service under its belt(i wonder,how many guys still go for live.com for searching purpose)
• “Cuil” has what Microsoft doesn’t…we mean “path-breaking team of ex-googlers”

What Next ?

If ‘cuil’ remains ‘cool’ and refines its search indexing to an exceptional level(sply. the correct mapping of thumbnail images with listed results) and Microsoft plans to acquire it and rather fight out with both its weapons(Live and cuil) against the Big Daddy “Google”,The future picture of search industry may not be the same as of now.