Well, when you’re Mike Arrington you do. GigaOm reports that TechCrunch has hired a CEO, named Heather Harde who is formerly senior VP of acquisitions and mergers from Fox interactive. Now you may be thinking: “a blogger hiring a CEO — wtf?!” But hiring someone to manage the business (amongst other sides of the operation) may make a helluva lot of sense for some (very few) bloggers.
Putting aside for the moment that she might have been brought in for her own abilities in M&A (to bring in other blogs to the CrunchNetwork, for example), it makes perfect sense when blogs get so big that non-blogging tasks start taking away from the time it actually takes to produce an effective blog. If you’re an instrumental part of that, whether it be actually writing, editing, guiding your team, or interacting with leads if you’re a newsdesk-type-of blog, you just might require an extra layer of managerial types to help so that you can get back to what you do best: create and run an excellent blog.
Granted, there are probably very few blogs that reach this kind of rarified terroritory; moreover, blogs are low-overhead vehicles for the most part. I think it speaks to exactly how large and complicated an entity that the CrunchNetwork (and TechCrunch) has become — and on the other hand, it might be a hint of the size of the plans that Mr. Arrington has for the future as well.
4 Comments
Talk about A List!
It surprises me that he waited so long. I’m totally annoyed by having to even think about stuff that hasn’t got anything to do with producing content. If some marketing guru saw the potential in my site and were ready to take over the promotion/marketing/PR aspects of my site (and the other sites which I’ll be launching, well, very soon (; ) for a portion of the profits, I’d say yes immediately.
BTW, I don’t think this is strange at all – TechCrunch is not a blog anymore, it’s a huge publication, not much different from PC World. You can only go so far on your own.
He’s building a communications empire (or, at least, a growing new media company) so having professional managers is a key part of the strategic plan. Give Arrington credit for hiring someone with such a high-profile/quality skill set, and having the ability to realize he doesn’t have to be CEO.
Since blogs are being used for marketing purpose so it is important that you need to hire a manager to lead the blog in proper direction and organize content and communication singnificantly.
3 Trackbacks
[...] Mike Arrington’s goal is to grow TechCrunch. According to the BCG Matrix, his blogging biz would be considered a STAR. This would mean that the TechCrunch network, or units within the network has large market share in a fast growing industry. For example, TechCrunch currently has 318,000 subscribers according to Feedburner & the industry which is growing is New-Media News Publications / Blogging. Tony at Deep Jive Interest reports on this story as well, stating that “it makes perfect sense when blogs get so big that non-blogging tasks start taking away from the time it actually takes to produce an effective blog.” [...]
[...] Stan Schroeder makes a good point at Deep Jive Interests: [...]
[...] Like our friend Tony Hung, we think this makes a lot of sense. Mike’s joint is often referred to as a technology and business blog, but it’s been obvious for a long time that the brand can do much, much more. We are no doubt in for a treat now as he and Heather set about to do just that. And we’ll have even more to talk with Mike about at mesh ‘07. [...]