eBay snaps up recommendations service Hunch

eBay has acquired recommendations platform Hunch, according to a press release issued Monday morning. The company did not disclose terms of the deal.

Sources told former TechCrunch editor-in-chief and current CrunchFund investor Michael Arrington that the purchase price was around $80 million.

Hunch, founded by serial entrepreneurs Caterina Fake, Chris Dixon and Tom Pinckney, launched in 2009 as a question-and-answer decision engine. The startup later switched gears to focus on building a “taste graph” to … Continue Reading

Why CNN’s ‘Black in America’ misses the point on race in tech

Almost no one has seen episode 4 of CNN’s  documentary series “Black in America,” about race in the technology world, but a lot of folks are already jumping in on the race controversy the show’s promo has kickstarted.

A lot of folks need to shut up and wait till it airs.

Black in America: The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley, is about the journey of eight participants in the NewMe Accelerator program for black … Continue Reading

Kevin Rose launches Oink on iPhone: Yelp, Instagram and a dash of Foursquare

Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has just launched his new discovery app Oink, which lets users tag and rate the things around them.

Oink users take photos with their iPhone, tag their location, and can use photo filters, so the concept combines what people like about photo sharing app Instagram, reviews site Yelp, and the location service Foursquare.

Oink differentiates itself from other mobile and social apps because of its emphasis on rankings-based discovery, and it … Continue Reading

Everyme is filling out your address book, gets funding from Andreessen-Horowitz and CrunchFund

Y Combinator alumni Everyme is making sure you’re never missing information from your address book again. In order to do this, the company closed a $1.5 million round of funding from a slew of big name investors including Andreessen-Horowitz, CrunchFund, Greylock Partners, Tencent, SV Angel, and others.

Mobile address books are a little cumbersome. You have to input or upload a lot of information, but it never really feels fleshed out. Some contacts don’t have … Continue Reading

Peak Games raises $11.5M for social gaming deals

Peak Games has raised $11.5 million for its plan to become a social gaming powerhouse in emerging markets, the company announced today.

The Istanbul-based company has also acquired two small game studios in Turkey and now ranks among the top social gaming companies on Facebook, according to AppData. The company’s growth reflects the rapid growth of Facebook and social gaming in markets such as Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and Mexico.

Peak … Continue Reading

Paul Carr’s next move? A new startup backed by former TechCrunch boss Michael Arrington

Former TechCrunch staff member Paul Carr announced today on his blog that he was starting a new company based in Las Vegas, Nevada with investments from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund.

Carr resigned from TechCrunch last week after a conflict with the publication’s parent company AOL over the firing of Arrington. At the time, Carr said he didn’t have any specific plans for the future, but the move to start a company … Continue Reading

Tech news owes a lot to Arrington, conflicts and all

A lot has changed since I first made it to Silicon Valley a little more than a year ago.

But one thing has remained constant: the ruthless competition for discovering and reporting the best news stories. Among those competitors is TechCrunch, one of the most efficient and tenacious tech news publications in the valley.

Michael Arrington stands — or, stood, rather — at the center of that team. His personality and potential conflicts of interest … Continue Reading

TechCrunch’s Arrington to start new personal blog

Surprising no one, TechCrunch founder and former editor-in-chief Michael Arrington announced that he’s planning to start a new personal blog within the next few days, according to a Twitter post from last night.

Arrington, who was dramatically ousted from TechCrunch after announcing a new venture fund, will join the ranks of well-known venture capitalists like Fred Wilson and Paul Graham who also run their own personal blogs.

Since such blogs aren’t journalistic enterprises, there should … Continue Reading

Here’s what you missed at TechCrunch Disrupt (photo gallery)

It wasn’t long before the everyone found out the news of the day at TechCrunch’s annual Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Michael Arrington, founder and editor-in-chief of TechCrunch, had stepped down amid controversy surrounding his new investment fund, the CrunchFund.

The whole hooplah put a little bit of a damper on the show at first. But the mood quickly picked up once some of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors and power players took the stage … Continue Reading

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington takes off

Michael Arrington, founder of technology blog TechCrunch and known for his fiery personality and zero tolerance for corporate authority, has “decided” to move on from the San Francisco-based tech news publication.

“It’s no longer a good situation for me to stay at TechCrunch,” Arrington said at his company’s annual conference TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. “It’s a sad day for me because this is a baby and I built this and I built the team … Continue Reading

AOL reportedly drops TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington for real this time, techies chime in

Michael Arrington, founder of technology blog TechCrunch and known for his fiery personality and zero tolerance for corporate authority, is no longer with the San Francisco-based tech news publication, according to a report by Fortune.

Yes, this is a drawn out saga, and we already reported last week that an AOL spokesperson had said Arrington was no longer employed at AOL. But then there was more back and forth, and everything was still unclear again … Continue Reading

TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington is raising his own venture fund

Michael Arrington, founder of the influential technology blog TechCrunch, is raising a $20 million fund to invest in early-state tech startups.

According to Fortune, the primary partner in the fund will be TechCrunch parent company Aol.

UPDATE: An Aol spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that the TechCrunch founder will indeed be a partner in “CrunchFund,” as the investment fund will be called. The rep also stated that Arrington will be replaced by a new managing editor … Continue Reading

Chill offers Turntable.fm-like service for video curation

Despite being called lame by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chill is the latest in a growing list of popular services that merges communication and streaming media.

Chill lets you curate YouTube and Vimeo videos much the way Turntable.fm lets you curate music.

Although the site is currently down due to an overwhelming response, you can gain access to Chill using Facebook Connect. Once inside, you’ll be prompted to join or start a Lounge (much like … Continue Reading