Times Company to Buy About.com for $410 Million.
About.com operates a network of nearly 500 guides who
create sites on thousands of topics from personal finance to
consumer electronics.
about.com's menagerie of authors
cover an enormous range of subjects.
Dan Gillmor thinks they paid too much, but what's the value of
fact checkers? They're recognizing that the
Times'
readership collectively knows more about
anything and
everything than their staff.
That's in line with Andrew Goodman's suggestions in
Great or Ho-Hum? A Wish List for NYT's About.com, some of which
can be summarized as: make about.com more like a blogger
community.
Paidcontent's
interview with Martin Nisenholtz, the
Times' senior vice
president for Digital Operations, points out 'In some respects, the
Times is now the largest blogging company in the world.'
Fred Wilson, in
Blogging
1.0 (continued) thinks the
Times made a smart buy, and
looks for the synergy of combining 'a network where creativity and
advertising happens on the edges' (about.com) with 'a traditional
centralized network, you get something even more powerful. The two
can feed each other and create even more value.'
Like ... AT&T and NCR? AT&T and Olivetti? AOL and
Time-Warner? Enron and broadband?