Money Coming into the Blogosphere

A ton of news came out while I was away, and I'll be slowly catching up here over the next couple of days. One bit of news that has seemed more and more likely recently, is that some major money from some huge companies is coming into the blogosphere. You had to see this coming. The least surprising of the two deals is that Weblogsinc was sold. AOL is a content network and Weblogsinc has content. $25 Million seems like a bit much to me, but what do I know. I'd expect Blog Networks to spring up from every direction now. The more surprising of the two deals is that Dave Winer sold Weblogs.com. In itself, that's not too surprising as he has mentioned that the site was becoming a bit too much for him to handle alone. At first I was surprised though, that the acquiring company was Verisign. That's the exact kind of company that Dave usually hammers on. Look at some of the things they've done in the recent past (Sitefinder anyone?) and you know they don't “get it”. But, after reading Dave's explanation that they are an “infrastructure” company I can see some logic to it. Let's hope they treat it differently then some of their other holdings, although I see no reason why they would. You can read what Verisign has to say about the deal here. At any rate, Dave has done a ton for blogging (among other things) and certainly deserves some remuneration for his efforts. You can just see Bubble2.0 starting to lift, can't you?
Weblogs, Blogs
–jeremy