GigaOM buying ContentNext Media, will pick up paidContent, mocoNews, and other sites
Technology blog GigaOM has agreed to purchase ContentNext Media, which owns paidContent, mocoNews, and several other websites with odd capitalization choices, the company announced today.
The move will help GigaOM increase its presence in New York City and Europe. The combined group of GigaOM and ContentNext will represent “more than 20 writers and editors,” according to paidContent. However, that’s not much more than the 18 editorial staffers listed on GigaOM’s editorial-team page.
Om Malik, founder … Continue Reading
Skimlinks skims $4.5 million to help bloggers earn cash (exclusive)
Skimlinks automatically converts product references in blog posts into affiliate sales links. The London startup just closed a funding round of $4.5 led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, the investment arm of media giant Bertelsmann AG.
For example, Skimlinks converts every mention of “Modern Warfare 3” in a review of that game into a link to a site like Amazon where the game can be bought. The blog earns a cut of every sale driven … Continue Reading
Former Gizmodo editor launches new tech site, Wirecutter
Brian Lam, the former editor of Gizmodo who took the site from a few million pageviews a month to more than 100 million, is launching a new site.
Called Wirecutter, it is a consumer-focused tech site. Unlike other gadget sites, Wirecutter is organized primarily as a leaderboard, highlighting the best products in a variety of categories (cameras, laptops, TVs, etc.). Instead of a constant stream of news and reviews, Wirecutter will recommend the top products … Continue Reading
TechCrunch’s Arrington to start new personal blog
Surprising no one, TechCrunch founder and former editor-in-chief Michael Arrington announced that he’s planning to start a new personal blog within the next few days, according to a Twitter post from last night.
Arrington, who was dramatically ousted from TechCrunch after announcing a new venture fund, will join the ranks of well-known venture capitalists like Fred Wilson and Paul Graham who also run their own personal blogs.
Since such blogs aren’t journalistic enterprises, there should … Continue Reading
TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington takes off
Michael Arrington, founder of technology blog TechCrunch and known for his fiery personality and zero tolerance for corporate authority, has “decided” to move on from the San Francisco-based tech news publication.
“It’s no longer a good situation for me to stay at TechCrunch,” Arrington said at his company’s annual conference TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. “It’s a sad day for me because this is a baby and I built this and I built the team … Continue Reading
AOL reportedly drops TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington for real this time, techies chime in
Michael Arrington, founder of technology blog TechCrunch and known for his fiery personality and zero tolerance for corporate authority, is no longer with the San Francisco-based tech news publication, according to a report by Fortune.
Yes, this is a drawn out saga, and we already reported last week that an AOL spokesperson had said Arrington was no longer employed at AOL. But then there was more back and forth, and everything was still unclear again … Continue Reading
Buzzlogic lands $7.8M more for socially targeted ads
Buzzlogic, a company that helps brands place socially targeted ads, today announced it has raised $7.8 million in a third round of funding. The company will use the funding for product development and to double its sales and account management teams.
The company offers an ad targeting tool that indexes millions of pieces of online content on partner blogs as well as the conversations around them to help advertisers place ads. By identifying what consumers … Continue Reading
Leaving in a Huff: or how AOL killed a beloved movie blog
One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I’m a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set my own hours. It is basically like being a prostitute, but with less stringent hygiene requirements.
Up until last week, one of the places I wrote for was Cinematical, a fine website devoted to news and commentary related … Continue Reading
Raiding Engadget's talent, Josh Topolsky forms new tech news site
Joshua Topolsky, former top editor at AOL’s Engadget tech blog, has set up a competing tech site with the backing of a new media company called SB Nation.
It’s a little odd on the surface, since SB Nation is a sports web publisher. Topolsky’s new tech site will be bankrolled by SB Nation’s founder Jim Bankoff, a former AOL executive who was responsible for buying Engadget and its mother ship Weblogs in 2005. It will … Continue Reading
How Microsoft went from 30 million Windows Live bloggers to 300,000
The popularity of Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces blogs appears to have been greatly exaggerated.
Microsoft announced a few days ago at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference that it will be moving its 7 million active Windows Live Spaces blogs to Automattic’s WordPress blogging platform. But now that number seems closer to 300,000 blogs — according to internal emails from Microsoft executives obtained by Betanews.
At first, Betanews’s Joe Wilcox assumed that the 300,000 blogs would come … Continue Reading
DEMO: Primal Pages for Publishers finds Web content for businesses
Primal is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.
Primal, a company leveraging semantic technology to automate online activities, today announced the launch of Pages for Publishers, a tool that aggregates similar themed content based from around the web into one page, at the … Continue Reading
OpenSky helps bloggers sell goods directly to readers
Primal is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.
Primal, a company leveraging semantic technology to automate online activities, today announced the launch of Pages for Publishers, a tool that aggregates similar themed content based from around the web into one page, at the … Continue Reading
Google Blogger gives itself a touch-up with template designer
Primal is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.
Primal, a company leveraging semantic technology to automate online activities, today announced the launch of Pages for Publishers, a tool that aggregates similar themed content based from around the web into one page, at the … Continue Reading
VentureBeat named most influential business blog
We’ve seen several attempts to rank blogs by influence, traffic or other measures. Public relations are among the groups that like producing such lists. They often send us these lists hoping we’ll link to the study to give it some publicity. Well, this time I’ll bite.
We got one survey in our inbox this week conducted by public relations firm Text100. It scoured the mainstream media to count and rank the citations made to different … Continue Reading
