RSSConde Naste Buys Tech Blog Ars Technica for $25,000,000
By Joseph Hunkins at May 17, 2008 0 Comments
Ars Technica, one of the web’s earliest technology blogs, has been bought by Conde Naste for a reported $25,000,000. This represents a handsome payday for the two Ars founders Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes, both with Harvard Divinity School backgrounds. Stokes actually holds two master’s degrees in early Christian history from Harvard Divinity School and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Ironically I can find no mention at all of the deal at the Ars Technica website, presumably because the deal won’t be announced until Monday.
This deal is not on the scale of last week’s acquistion of CNET by CBS for $1.8 billion but it is another indication that mainstream media outlets are working to buy their way into blogging rather than grow their own new media brands. Will this approach work? I’m inclined to think it will not unless they can avoid the problems faced by traditional corporate blogs which suffer from “commercial correctness” and thus lose one of the most appealing aspects of blogging which is sharp critical analysis, irreverent swipes at other products and people, and news at the speed of the internet. None of this fits well with the tightly controlled corporate media model.
Tags: ars technica, conde naste
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