Nov. 17, 2006 - Update: The New York Times has confirmed that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL and that TechCrunch originally broke the story.

TechCrunch broke the news this afternoon that an unidentified source has stated that Jason Calacanis, CEO of the large AOL-owned Weblogs, Inc. blog network, has resigned from AOL.  Jim Turner at One by One Media notes the similarity of this developing story to another that broke yesterday: Duncan Riley, a co-founder of the b5media blog network, is no longer with b5media.

While we at Know More Media don't have any big high-level blog network leader departure stories to add to the mix, we do follow such stories with great interest.  Let no one worry that blog networks are about to become less stable.  On the contrary, as more and more people create blogs and build communities around them, more and more networks embracing many varieties of business models (or simply personal in nature) are bound to form.  Calacanis and Riley are two of the best-known names associated with blog networks today, so naturally their movements are followed with great interest among many bloggers.  But let's all be patient and wait for more facts to emerge before we make unrealistic or hasty assumptions regarding what they and their companies have decided to do.