Michael Arrington To Leave AOL

Former TechCrunch editor, Michael Arrington, has left AOL less than a year after his US technology site was bought by the internet and media company.

In a statement, AOL said Arrington “decided” to leave to concentrate on his newly formed venture capital fund, CrunchFund. AOL will remain the biggest investor in CrunchFund.

But the move comes just 10 days after Arrington and AOL became embroiled in a conflict of interest spat, in which the combative blogger issued a stern ultimatum to his AOL boss, Arianna Huffington.

Arrington has not enjoyed an easy relationship with Huffington since she was made editor-in-chief of the AOL blog network following the $315m (£200m) acquisition of her Huffington Post site in February. On Monday night, Arrington implied that Huffington had misled people with her explanation of the row. He said on Twitter: “ok @ariannahuff. Let’s go ahead and talk about how this really played out.”

Erick Schonfeld, the longtime number two at TechCrunch, is taking over from Arrington as editor. Guardian

Photo: Gawker