AOL rumoured to be in talks to buy Mashable
AOL is reportedly in talks to acquire popular social media blog Mashable.
The news was first reported on blogging site Gawker and spread to Twitter after well-known blogger Robert Scoble tweeted “My sources confirm that Mashable is being sold to AOL. Trying to get more details now”.
However, he later tweeted: “”I am hearing now from another source who has a source inside AOL that it isn’t being confirmed from inside AOL. If you know anything call.”
Pete Cashmore, Mashable founder, has so far declined to comment on the speculation.
Mashable was launched in July 2005. The site has grown to eight million unique visitors and with over 1.89 million followers on Twitter.
In 2008, AOL made a failed attempt to buy Mashable rival TechCrunch for an estimated US$20m to US$30m. However, it did acquire technology blog Engadget in 2005.
AOL also owns social networking site Bebo, which has dramatically scaled back its operations in Australia after failing to dent Facebook’s lead. It has also been forced to make job cuts to its global operations.
Another sign of the evolution of the “Content Exchange” model
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Guardian bought paidcontent.org for about $30m a few years back. These acquisitions and these prices feel overvalued to me – I wonder what the real earning opportunity is for these niche media/tech nerd sites are. Whether they’re real future commercial foundations or more distractions to look like the large guys are evolving their approach.
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