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Posts with tag: tech-blogs | Return to BloggersBlog.com Homepage
CBS to Acquire CNET For $1.8 Billion
 CNET and its array of Internet properties have been acquired by CBS in a $1.8 billion acquisition. Paid Content says the deal is expected to close in Q3.
Said CBS CEO Les Moonves in the statement: "CBS stands for premium content and unparalleled reach, and CNET Networks will add a tremendous platform to extend our complementary entertainment, news, sports, music and information content to a whole new global audience. Together, CBS and CNET Networks will have significant additional exposure to the fastest- growing advertising sector and can accelerate our growth through a number of new content, promotion and advertising initiatives. We could not be more pleased with the prospect of adding CNET Networks and its tremendous team of people to the CBS family. I look forward to working with Quincy Smith, Neil Ashe and the considerable combined talent at both companies, as we build upon our success."
Among the sites in the CNET family that will be part of CBS Interactive pending approval: CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, mp3.com, CNET news.com, UrbanBaby, CHOW, Search.com, BNET, MySimon and TechRepublic. The company has also been building out its China operations, with sites devoted to womens content and auto.
The press release can be found here. CNET has a lot of blogs and websites with a considerable amount of traffic. CBS should be able to use these blogs and websites to help drive traffic to other CBS properties.
ReadWriteWeb calls CNET the "the granddaddy of all the blog networks on the web." They run a number of well-known blogs including Webware, The Iconoclast, The Social and Crave. You can see all of CNET's blogs here.
Posted on May 15, 2008
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Should Tech Bloggers Form a Dream Team to Destroy CNET?
 Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has an interesting post that says more blogs are raising capital. Arrington writes that because of this capital it may be changing the politics of linking in the blogosphere.
And now that the big guys in the Gang are being injected with capital, hiring tens of employees and expanding their businesses, they suddenly have a lot more to lose. Linking is never done just because. Rather, links are your political capital that must be expended appropriately. Don't link at the right time and in two weeks when you're pushing your own headline, you'll wish you had. When you stop seeing other blogs as people you admire and want to discuss things with, and start to see them as your competitor, your brain shifts and you stop linking the way you had previously.
Michael Arrington's talk of the "Gang" brings back memories of the old A-list linking discussions. Does Venture Capital make a blog think more about where it links? Possibly. VC money can mean there are people looking over your shoulder wanting you to reach those traffic goals you promised them to get their investment. VC money can run out and not be replinished. These blogs might link more often to higher trafficked blogs where a return link might pack a bigger whallop. They may also want to avoid linking to their competition.
Arrington also says he would like to create the Dream Team (think 92 Olympic games) of tech bloggers to take out CNET.
What I'd like to see, and even be a part of, is the blogger equivalent to the 1992 U.S. Mens Basketball Dream Team. That team could take CNET apart in a year, hire the best of the survivors there, and then move on to bigger prey.
Just the thought of being a part of something like that has held us back from raising any outside capital at all. I believe we have the beginning of a team that can play a role in this new Dream Team.
So think twice before taking that venture money, guys. You may be shutting more doors of opportunity than you realize.
Is CNET really an ambitious enough goal for a tech blogging Dream Team? Slicon Alley Insider is happy to help TechCrunch kill CNET although they "would secretly hope that we could find more interesting things to do." Chartreuse writes, "The idea of blogger super heroes getting together to fight CNET just struck me as bizarre."
If you had a Dream Team sized squad of technology bloggers who would be on it? Hardly anyone would agree with the answer to that question. Everyone has different ideas of who their favorite tech bloggers are. The same linking politics Michael Arrington describes in his post would have many other tech bloggers immediately aligning against this Dream Team. The blogosphere allows for leading blogs but it frowns on the idea of a single blog (in this case the Dream Team blog) getting the bulk of all the web traffic. There is already a Dream Team of sorts for technology blogs anyway and that is TechMeme, a website that makes it easy to quickly find what some of the top tech bloggers have to say. Meanwhile, CNET appears to have survived the blogosphere assualt. CNET partially assimilated itself into the blogosphere several years ago by launching blogs of their own.
Kara Swisher at BoomTown reports that TechCrunch is considering "raising as much as $15 million, giving it a $35 million valuation." TechCrunch will probably need the money to compete with all the other technology blogs raising money.
Posted on March 20, 2008
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Microsoft Makes $44.6B Bid for Yahoo
 The big tech news of the day is Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo. The story has ignited a blogstorm on Techmeme and Megite as you might expect.
Yahoo has been trying a variety of things to get going over the past few years. None of them have worked especially well for the company. If you look at Yahoo's list of recent acquisitions you will see content companies, social media websites and software companies. Yahoo is still a very ambitious company but they lack a clear focus. They bought both Flickr and Rivals.com. Are they a search engine, a traditional media company or a social media website? Jeff Jarvis calls them the "last old media company." Part of the reason Yahoo seems to be flip flopping in its acquisition strategy is the complexity of creating an Internet business model that works. This is something Google has accomplished. Microsoft wants to take Google on and they see a Yahoo acquisition as the best way to do this. Whether or not Yahoo accepts the offer or not remains to be seen but the stock is really jumping on the news.
The New York Times Bits blog calls it an offer Yahoo can't refuse. Bits' posts points to a Henry Blodget spreadsheet that shows MICRO-HOO's combined balance sheet.
DealBook has posted a copy of Microsoft's letter to Yahoo. Microsoft's press release can be found here.
Ars Technica reports that the two companies combined would control "25 to 35 percent of the search market." It is worth noting that neither company has a blog-specific search engine. Perhaps the combined companies could then turn around and nab Technorati or launch one of their own to compete with Google Blog Search. Search Engine Land has more on what the deal might mean for search engines.
Don't get too excited about the prospect of a Microsoft-Yahoo. Forbes is reporting that Microsoft execs have said they may have to compete with other potential acquirers to win Yahoo. The Forbes article mentions Ebay, News Corp, AT&T and Comcast as the other companies that might try to out bid for Yahoo.
Updates
Some Flickr users are creating graphics to protest the possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo. Some don't like the idea of a Microsoft-owned Flickr.
Aggressive Microsoft: BoomToom reports that Microsoft gave Yahoo just two days before going public with the news of their offer for Yahoo.
Henry Blodget says there may be another bidder - a major private-equity firm
Posted on February 1, 2008
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Valleywag and TechCrunch Changing Internal Linking Habits
We first complained about internal linking on a post in July. Blogs like Loose Wire have also complained about the practice. The good news is that it appears a couple of the bigger tech blogs may be changing the way they link.
Loose Wire points to this post from Digital Inspiration that says Valleywag has made some changes.
Valleywag, the Silicon Valley gossip blog that everyone hates but still reads, always practiced excessive internal linking but good sense prevailed at Gawker and they have suddenly changed that habit.
Blog posts on Valleywag look clean and more readable than ever before and it's now very easy to spot the phrase that links to the source of the story - no more looking at the status bar of the browser to find where a link leads to.
TechCrunch also appears to be changing its practice of internal linking. If you look at this entry by Michael Arrington about Flickr and Picnik you can see that he linked Picnik directly to Picnik's URL and he also included in parenthesis a profile link to Picnik's profile on the Crunchbase website. They still have an internal link but now they also have the direct link which gives you an opportunity to get directly to the company's website as well as to the Crunchbase profile which contains information about the company and links to relevant TechCrunch posts.
It is good to see these leading tech blogs pointing their readers in the right direction. Unfortunately, it looks like Webware has picked up the habit.
Posted on October 20, 2007
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CNET Expands Blog Network
 CNET has actually been publishing blogs since 2005 -- see here. You might remember the now non-existent Blogma. However, CNET has only recently officially launched their blog network according to a recent CNET press release. CNET's newly expanded blog network can be found at blogs.cnet.com. The network includes these core blogs: CNET TV, Crave, The Daily Download, News.com Blog, ShopGrok and WebWare as well as over a dozen other tech and gadget blogs.
The 18 bloggers were invited to join the CNET Blog Network to bring fresh perspectives; CNET will be adding more topics and bloggers in the coming months. These bloggers are expected to uphold the same journalism standards as the CNET editors, so users can expect the same level of editorial quality from contributors to the CNET Blog Network as they do from CNET editors. The Blog Network will comprise 14 new blogs, including:
Cellular Obsession - Popular talk-show host Ronn Owens from San Francisco's KGO Radio has talked so much to his listeners about the latest cell phones that it's become a passionate hobby. Owens offers his opinions on the latest phones with the CNET audience.
Design and Technology - Design enthusiast Jean Aw finds the most incredible things in the most unlikely of places and loves bringing them to the attention of her readers.
(parent.thesis) - Author of a book titled, "Mojo Mom", Amy Tiemann and her husband Michael Tiemann offer the latest news and musings about raising kids in today's hyper-connected, 24/7 world.
Sports Tech - As one of the founders of golf's leading fitness resource, the Titleist Performance Institute, Dave Phillips writes about technology's significant impact on golf today, and the sports gear that is giving today's players an inside edge to every game they play.
Additional blogs include: The open road with Matt Asay, a blog focusing on open source; The digital home with Don Reisinger; The Macalope, a blog focusing on Apple; Politics, Policy, and Technology with Donnie Fowler; Speeds and Feeds, with Kevin Krewell, Peter Glaskowsky, and Jim Handy; Green Tech, with Vinod Khosla, Neal Dikeman, and Martin Tobias; The Web Services Report with Harrison Hoffman; Music and Technology with Matt Rosoff; Media Sphere with Josh Wolf; and Searchlight: an SEO blog with Stephan Spencer. In addition to this original content, CNET plans to syndicate blog content from Marc Andreesen and Mark Cuban.
CNET says they will be adding other bloggers and blogs to the network. Clearly, CNET's editors foresee a very bloggish future.
Posted on June 29, 2007
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Daniel Sieberg Now Blogging for CBS
 A post on the Couric & Co blog welcomes a new technology blog from Daniel "Cyber" Sieberg called Tech Talk. Sieberg became familiar to many as the host of CNN's scientific and technology show called Next. Sieberg's welcome post can be found here.
I was tempted to open this blog with a clever quote about technology or about introductions in general, maybe something from Einstein or Wilde or Marconi, but then I thought the best way to introduce myself is simply to say, "Hey there, fellow tech talker."
I'm the new science and technology correspondent at CBS News, and I'd like this blog to be a transparent dialogue of ideas and opinions. I've spent the last 15 years covering science and technology in some form, working for places like The Vancouver Sun, CTV, and CNN. For more you can just click here. But in all my years of being plugged into the digital world I've never maintained a blog, so I hope I can do justice to this one.
The blog launched just before CES so most of the posts have covered CES topics like the iPhone. Sieberg also interviewed Bill Gates.
Posted on January 10, 2007
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Yahoo Takes on Gadget and Tech Blogs
 Yahoo has launched a new service called Yahoo Tech that features how-to advice and several technology blogs. A New York Times article
says Yahoo wants tech advertisers.
In one of its first major efforts to build a Web site with original material, Yahoo will introduce today a site devoted to consumer technology.
The site, called Yahoo Tech (tech.yahoo.com), will feature blogs on technology and a weekly video program. It will also republish articles and product reviews from several magazines and accept comments contributed by users.
Yahoo's goal for the site is to create more space for technology-related advertisers, said Scott Moore, Yahoo's vice president of content operations.
"We take in many millions from technology and telecom advertising," he said. "We had a lot of requests from advertisers to advertise on content related to their categories."
The blogs on Yahoo Tech can be found on the Advisers tab. They include blogs by Gina Hughes, Robin Raksin, Dory Devlin and Christopher Null. That's 75% female blogs at Yahoo Tech. This is good to see in a blogosphere where male tech blogs seem to be the most visible. One of the Adviser blogs is written by Gina Hughes, who also runs the Techie Diva blog. She announced her appearance on Yahoo Tech in a post this morning.
The number of technology media blogs and websites is enormous but Yahoo also has considerable brand power on its side. CNET, tech blogs and other tech gadget focused publications should be at least a little nervous by this potential new traffic drain. For Yahoo it is easy to promote their new blogs. They can just feature them on my.yahoo and quickly build a subscriber base. On the other hand, a link from one of Yahoo's new tech blogs could drive a little traffic your way.
Posted on May 1, 2006
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