Top Web News Blogs

Michael Arrington has become an influential voice in the world of Web startups. (We covered their TechCrunch40 conference yesterday.) TechCrunch started as a hobby blog and is now the flagship site of a growing media company, with 5 full-time and 16 part-time employees. (source: USA Today) Or perhaps 6: Erick Schonfeld just joined from Business 2.0 magazine (including their popular group blog: Next Net). Also blogging at TechCrunch: Duncan Riley (#24 on NxE's list of fifty most influential bloggers). TechCrunch CEO is Heather Harde, previously the SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions at Fox Interactive Media.

Whether by luck or design, Mashable's focus on social networking proved a good choice. Founder Pete Cashmore hails from London.

Read/WriteWeb comes from New Zealand, founded by Richard MacManus. Regular contributers include Josh Catone, Alex Iskold, and Emre Sokullu. Marshall Kirkpatrick joined the team last week. The site also lists 7 occasional contributers.

Tim O'Reilly is an icon of the computer book publishing industry, a key mover behind the open source movement, and has his finger on the pulse of the Web. He and members of the community share their views at O'Reilly Radar.

Om Malik is a professional journalist turned blogger, and a great source of scoops and inside info. With the succes of GigaOM, he raised money and launched several other blogs: Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech, and FoundRead. The blogging team includes Katie Fehrenbacher, Liz Gannes, Jackson West, Wagner James Au, Anne Zelenka, and 8 contributors.

Robert Scoble parlayed his initial blogging experience into becoming what many regarded as the blogging face of Microsoft. He left to become a videoblogger at PodTech.net, where he interviews "geeks, technologist & developers". His personal blog remains popular, including an active comment section.

Founded by 22-year old college student Neil Patel, Pronet Advertising is a group blog from ACS, with posts by (among others?) David Chen, Jay Cross, Ryan Fujiu, Cameron Olthuis, Muhammad Saleem, and MG Siegler. The blog doesn't talk specifically about SEO though is no doubt informed by their SEO work.

Download Squad is yet another blog from AOL's Weblogs Inc. (WIN). It currently lists 2 bloggers who posted more than 100 times each in the past 30 days: Brad Linder and Chris Gilmer. Rounding out the list with at least 6 posts: Ted Wallingford, Lisa Hoover, Emily Price, Jason Clarke, Dolores Parker, and Peter White. Like most of the WIN blogs, their "About" page is nowhere to be found.