AOL Expanding Their Horizons - Purchasing TechCrunch and 5Min Media

Just today, the deal was closed on AOL purchasing the popular technology blog, TechCrunch. TechCrunch was founded around five years ago and ever since then, they've began to emerge as one of the popular technology blogs.

On Monday of this week, rumors of this deal took place and apparently, for a good load of money with it.

AOL is buying TechCrunch-sources tell me for about $40m. $AOL mediamoney.cnbc.com - Julia Boorstin from CNBC

If any person would come to me and offer me forty million dollars for one of my blogs, it would be hard to turn down that offer. TechCrunch's founder, Michael Arrington, must be extremely happy to see his technology become part of the AOL network along with other popular blogs like Engadget, TUAW, and even DownloadSquad.

There's one thing I do have to say. I know AOL will do great things with TechCrunch. They've done some amazing things with all of their other blogs, and hopefully, they'll be able to take TechCrunch off WordPress's servers and onto their own so they don't have all of that downtime.

But wait, that's not the only thing AOL has purchased. They also purchased a popular video site called 5min Media, which was founded in 2007. Ironically, on a blog post onTechCrunch, it's reported to be sold to AOL for 65 million! 5min was meant for short videos, particularly how-to videos but then expanded to our modern YouTube that we have today. They have came a long way in only three years, and unlike TechCrunch being in the business for five years, they're a starter company compared to TechCrunch.

It seems to me that AOL is really trying to create a better video network and also have some of the most popular technology blogs on the planet. We'll have to see what'll happen, but for now, my homepage will always be Google... sorry AOL. :P

What do you think about AOL acquiring TechCrunch and 5Min? I really do think AOL are going to do great things with both purchases, but we'll have to see. I'm hoping we'll see a major design change on TechCrunch also because the current design is kind of bland but I hope it doesn't look like Engadget with its "barfed up rainbow".

If you would like to read more about AOL acquiring TechCrunch, visit their post about it:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/tim-armstrong-we-got-techcrunch/

If you would like to read more about AOL acquiring 5Min Media, visit this blog post on BusinessWire:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100928006216/en/AOL-Acquires-5min-Media-Web%E2%80%99s-Largest-Video