The power of TechCrunch blogger Arrington

Wired magazine’s Fred Vogelstein takes a look in the latest issue at the power within the tech industry being wielded by TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington.

Vogelstein wrote, “VCs and entrepreneurs read Arrington for the same reason they pay attention to any top journalist or columnist: He’s smart, sourced up, and ahead of the curve. ‘He has more information than any of us,’ says David Hornik, a partner at August Capital and an occasional source for TechCrunch. Arrington breaks news — like his scoop about Google buying YouTube or Yahoo’s internal financial analysis of acquisition target facebook — well ahead of the mainstream media. One day he’ll review the pros and cons of all the online photo-editing sites, another day he’ll give you the blow-by-blow on why a company like Filmloop was sold, and on yet another day he’ll rant about how Silicon Valley could use a downturn.

“And unlike most solo bloggers, Arrington has turned his passion into a tidy business. Revenue from advertising, job listings, and sponsorships now totals about $200,000 a month. He says he could have sold the operation last fall to a media company (which he won’t name) for $8.5 million, and he may still. But with a new top-flight CEO from Fox Interactive Media, roughly $1 million in the bank, and VCs lining up around the block to invest, Arrington talks like a man who wants to build an empire. There are lots of blogs with more raw traffic — mostly celebrity or political sites like A Socialite’s Life and Daily Kos — but few with as much business influence. Based on how many times other Web sites link to his content — an unscientific but accepted yardstick — Arrington is the world’s fourth-most-powerful blogger, according to Technorati.

“By any measure, it has been a remarkable rise. Two years ago, Arrington was a nobody — a former attorney and entrepreneur who, at 35, looked as if he might never hit it big. Now, without a journalism background or media-giant bankroll, he is mentioned in the same sentence as big-shot tech journalist Walt Mossberg and venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz, two of the guys who backed Google.”

Read more here.