| J. Michael Arrington | |
|---|---|
Arrington at the World Economic Forum |
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| Born | Jack Michael Arrington[1] March 13, 1970 [1] Orange, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Blogger, entrepreneur |
| Website | |
| TechCrunch , uncrunched.com | |
J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Orange, California) is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet.[2][3]
In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.[4] Wired magazine also included him in a flowchart of "internet blowhards" citing his obsession with "Web 2.0".[5]
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Arrington grew up in Huntington Beach, California and Surrey, England, attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a major in economics. He went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1995.[6] He practiced corporate and securities law at O’Melveny & Myers, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.[7]
Arrington left the practice of law to join Real Names, which failed after raising $100M.[8] Arrington was co-founder of Achex, an internet payments company, which was sold to First Data Corp for US$32 million and is now the back end of Western Union online. "I made enough to buy a Porsche. Not much more," he says.[8]
His other entrepreneurial endeavors include co-founding Zip.ca and Pool.com, acting as chief operating officer for Razorgator, and founding Edgeio. He was also more recently on the board of directors for the startup Foldera which was designing a software as a service organizational tool.
Arrington rose to internet prominence with his Silicon Valley blog, TechCrunch. TechCrunch covers internet startups and news. In early September 2011 Arrington was reported to be no longer employed by TechCrunch but associated with a new investment company, AOL Ventures.[9] Within days, it was being reported that he was no longer associated with AOL Ventures.[10]
On the Gillmor Gang on June 6, 2009, Michael Arrington accused Leo Laporte of giving the Palm Pre a good review in return for accepting a 5-day evaluation unit, which Laporte interpreted as an attack on his journalistic integrity subsequently causing Laporte to storm off the air. Later that same day, Michael Arrington and Leo Laporte apologized to each other. After much discussion between Steve Gillmor, Leo Laporte, Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble, it was decided that the Gillmor Gang would no longer appear on the TWiT network due to the "hostile" nature of the show which Laporte didn't agree with.[11] Laporte later confirmed on the pre-show of the June 9, 2009 recording of Net@Nite that future shows of the Gillmor Gang will not air on the TWiT Netcast Network.
Arrington has been known to advocate dropping out of college,[12] stating at the 2010 UC-Berkeley Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series that “the best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out. Everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”.[13]
In May 2010, Arrington was involved in a verbal confrontation with CEO of Yahoo!, Carol Bartz. Arrington started the interview by asking Bartz, "So how the fuck are you?" To which she responded, "Is that appropriate?".[14] Later in the interview, Bartz became perturbed with Arrington's criticism of the Yahoo! business model of conglomeration rather than single revenue source producers. Bartz then responded to Arrington saying, "you are involved in a very tiny company" and ended the exchange by telling him to "fuck off."[15] Bartz received some support from bloggers for her response, including Guy Kawasaki who stated, "I respect Carol Bartz even more now."[16]