Conde Nast rolls up tech blog Ars Technica

Venture Beat — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:48:19 -0700

Publisher Conde Nast is acquiring the technology blog Ars Technica, TechCrunch has learned. The site will be placed under the Wired Digital umbrella which includes both Wired and Reddit, two previous Conde Nast technology purchases.

TechCrunch has all the major details including that the price is thought to be in the $25 million range (the same range Conde Nast paid for Wired in 2006), and that all of Ars Technica’s current employees, including founders Ken Fisher and John Stokes, will be transitioning over with the company.

Ars Technica is another large site to leave online advertising network Federated Media (VentureBeat uses Federated Media for some of its advertising). This comes shortly after Federated Media raised $50 million to expand its services for its publishers. Conde Nast will be in charge of the site’s ads going forward.

In full disclosure, I had a brush up with Ars Technica on my personal blog earlier this week. I feel the site has been using some questionable practices with regards to some of its stories. Some have agreed with me (both publicly and privately), while others disagreed. Ars has denied knowingly doing anything wrong. It will be interesting (at least to me) to see if there are any editorial processes and site policies that change as a result of this move.

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Conde Nast rolls up tech blog Ars Technica