Posts Tagged ‘Ben Popper’

The New York Observer will take on the New York City tech scene with Wednesday’s launch of BetaBeat, an Observer.com spinoff with a Twitter feed and Facebook page.

BetaBeat will focus on ventures, startups, investments, and personalities in the area, along with offering social scorecards ranking the top players, and analyzing trends and new products. It will be led by Observer Media Group editor-in-chief Elizabeth Spiers, who said:

BetaBeat will allow us to go into greater, in-depth coverage of the movers and shakers in the tech world. This is an exciting new venture for us.

The founding editor of BetaBeat will be Ben Popper, who has written for The New York Times, Fast Company, Slate, and The Atlantic. Former ReadWriteWeb blogger Adrianne Jeffries is also on board.

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Reaction continues to pour in on AOL’s deal to acquire TechCrunch, including more insight from TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who spoke with CNN’s Dan Simon for CNNMoney.com (video below).

And Ben Popper of The New York Observer shared his own theory: AOL bought TechCrunch because Gawker has maintained the momentum it gained from its purchase of an iPhone 4 prototype that had been lost by an Apple engineer, and it has skyrocketed past AOL in terms of traffic.