• All Things D, Monday, April 4, 2011 11:53 AM

In a move that doesn't bode well for AOL's broader content strategy, sports site SB Nation plans to launch a tech news site helmed by outgoing Engadget editor-in-chief Josh Topolsky. Making the move possible is Jim Bankoff, chairman and CEO of SB Nation, and the former AOL exec responsible for bring Engadget into the Web portal's fold in 2005. Along with Topolsky, Bankoff  "has grabbed eight staffers who had left the huge tech site amid tensions recently," reports BoomTown.

Under the headline, "Engadget Defection Exposes AOL's Major Weakness," GigaOm writes that Topolsky took issue with the post-HuffPo-acquisition "‘AOL Way,' which was revealed in a series of slides from an internal presentation, and involved quotas for page views and a search-driven strategy that screamed ‘content farm.'"  As the Guardian puts it: "Joshua Topolsky has planted his tanks squarely on Arianna Huffington's lawn."

"Engadget's relationship with AOL was always tense," according to The New York Times. "A high-velocity site that competed for technology news with the likes of Gizmodo and CNET, Engadget never fit in with other AOL properties, largely middle-of-the-road, just-good-enough sites that didn't bring a lot to the table."

The yet-to-be-named site will represent the first content expansion for Washington, D.C.-based SB Nation. "It will be worth watching to see what these folks really mean by starting a ‘new media' web site in 2011," notes VentureBeat. Yet, "It's a little odd on the surface, since SB Nation is a sports web publisher."

Still, "The technology we built is applicable beyond sports," Bankoff tells BoomTown. "It was an opportunity to apply our model...into another content category where there was an overlap in demographics." Meanwhile, sources tell BoomTown that AOL is considering Tim Stevens, Engadget's current automotive editor, to replace the outgoing Topolsky.

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