Publisher Conde Nast is acquiring the technology blog Ars Technica, TechCrunch has learned. The site will be placed under the Wired Digital umbrella which includes both Wired and Reddit, two previous Conde Nast technology purchases.
TechCrunch has all the major details including that the price is thought to be in the $25 million range (the same range Conde Nast paid for Wired in 2006), and that all of Ars Technica’s current employees, including founders Ken Fisher and John Stokes, will be transitioning over with the company.
Ars Technica is another large site to leave online advertising network Federated Media (VentureBeat uses Federated Media for some of its advertising). This comes shortly after Federated Media raised $50 million to expand its services for its publishers. Conde Nast will be in charge of the site’s ads going forward.
In full disclosure, I had a brush up with Ars Technica on my personal blog earlier this week. I feel the site has been using some questionable practices with regards to some of its stories. Some have agreed with me (both publicly and privately), while others disagreed. Ars has denied knowingly doing anything wrong. It will be interesting (at least to me) to see if there are any editorial processes and site policies that change as a result of this move.
Tags: co:ars technica, co:conde nest, co:Wired
8:37 am
arghyle » Blog Archive » Ars Technica Sold, Accused said:
[...] read a number of posts about the sale yesterday, but today when reading RSS I stumbled onto Venture Beat’s post. Rather than the congratulatory back-slapping I had been reading, author MG Siegler (the Paris [...]
1:07 am
Roundup: Microsoft offered $40-a-share for Yahoo in 2007, Time Warner tries to take the Internet back to the 1990s and more » VentureBeat said:
[...] site leaving the Federated Media ad network. Technology blog Ars Technica recently left after being acquired by Conde Nast and last year social voting site Digg left when it let Microsoft take over its advertisements. [...]