&8216'Tis the season, right
Cond© Nast, the owner of publications like tech magazine Wired and social news aggregation site Reddit, announced today it has raised a $500 million fund and brought in Andrew Siegel, a former Yahoo mergers and acquisitions expert, to help the publisher go on a shopping spree.
Cond© Nast isn&'t much of a stranger to trying out new forms of media.‚ The publisher has been on the prowl for some new, defining media sources for several years now. Its flagship publication, Wired, launched an iPad version of its magazine earlier this year. It purchased the news aggregator site Reddit.com in 2006 as well, which has since exploded in popularity thanks to slipping traffic at rival site Digg.com.
With the success of upstart companies like Groupon that have essentially managed to generate completely new markets, it&'s pretty clear why the publishing company would come topside and start looking for new revenue streams. There wasn&'t any indication of what kind of companies Cond© Nast was looking to pick up outside of a cryptic focus on &''digital brands,&'' according to a report by All Things D. But with newcomers like Groupon spurning offers worth at least $6 billion, the publisher is probably going to be on the prowl for fresh, early-stage startups.
You can pretty much rule out news aggregation sites in that &''digital brand&'' spectrum, though. After Cond© Nast acquired Reddit in 2006, it became a bit reluctant to send additional resources to the site&'s owners. The site as a result periodically experiences traffic overload and outages. To bypass Cond© Nast&'s frugal attitude, it began offering a premium subscription that had some additional features for a monthly fee.
Ben Huh, the mastermind behind the Cheezburger network that helped popularize some of the Internet&'s most popular memes, even offered to buy the site at one point. Site founder Alexis Ohanian said he would be surprised if Cond© Nast agreed to sell the site. But he said the two would chat at some point. It isn&'t clear whether Cond© Nast hasn&'t found a way to monetize the Internet-savvy Reddit community, or if it simply has no interest.
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Companies: Conde Nast, digg, Reddit, Wired
People: Ben Huh
Companies: Conde Nast, digg, Reddit, Wired
People: Ben Huh
Matthew Lynley is VentureBeat's enterprise writer. He graduated from University of North Carolina, where he studied math and physics, in May 2010. He has reported for Reuters. He currently lives in San Francsico, Calif. You can reach him at mattl@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @logicalmoron.
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