Huffington Post Archives - Serious Startups

More Changes At AOL As Patch Editor In Chief Brian Farham Steps Down

There was actually positive news out of the AOL camp last week when it was announced that they were selling 800 patents to rival Microsoft for $1 billion dollars. That news was quickly overshadowed by the Facetagram announcement later in the day. The patent sale to Microsoft was a great move for AOL’s bottom line however there still seems to be trouble and disorganization in their media division, which is supposed to be their bread and butter.

The Blogsphere erupted with joy last week when Michael Arrington announced that he and Crunchfund partner MG Siegler would be participating at Tech Crunch Disrupt NY. Arrington will be the main interviewer and pseudo MC again, but this year there will be a lot less speculation swarming around him. Last year during Tech Crunch Disrupt NY Arrington’s removal from the company that he founded was just starting to bubble. Relief has been in the air knowing that the next Disrupt will be hosted by the man himself. Of course PandoDaily wasn’t the least bit excited about that.

With the TechCrunch/AOL/PandoDaily headlines taking center stage many missed the fact that AOL’s Editor In Chief of their Patch properties Brian Farham was stepping down. While on the surface it seems that Farnham was happy with the progress that Patch has made under his leadership, Forbes magazine was quick to point out that AOL recently hired a chief content officer for Patch which bumped Farham down to the number two position.

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Huffington Post Co-Founder Has His Sights On CNN With New Startup

Ken Lerer, one of the co-founders of the Huffington Post has embarked on a new video startup. He is going to deliver the news via the web and has his eyes set on traditional tv cable news outlets like CNN and Fox News. According to AllthingsD’s Peter Kafka Lerer is looking to provide a news outlet for those who watch Jon Stewart, and a generation that consumes most of their media from the internet.

It’s obvious that people are moving to the web for news, and real time events especially when there are live events and breaking stories. That’s evidenced in a 20% upswing in NCAA tournament viewing online.

Lerer who, with co-founder Ariana Huffington, sold the news giant Huffington Post last year to AOL for over one million dollars. Of course the Huffington Post is a more traditional new media outlet.

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AOL, TechCrunch, Crunchbase Et Al, Ignore Android Developer’s Intellectual Property

The one time internet giant AOL, which has been declining over the past few years, has been trying desperately to bring readers from other sites to their media properties like TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Patch and other blogs and online content. With some of the more notable websites in the tech community, AOL has always seemed to be very supportive of intellectual property.

In fact, as recent as last week, we published a story about AOL considering licensing patents rather than suing over them. A move to not further clog the arteries of our already busy patent court system.

You would think that AOL, TechCrunch and Crunchbase would be very protective of not just their intellectual property but also the intellectual property of those businesses and members of the community that they serve. You would also think that TechCrunch, Crunchbase and AOL would be protective and supportive of Android developer’s, especially those who have premium apps in the Google Play Store.

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