Gawker Media Sells three sites

I know this is old news, but there is much to think about, and wired hits the nail on the head, have mega blogs, those semi-corporate entities that have been giving the papers a run for their money started to top out. Have they effectively gained all the market share they can in a world of fickle media consumers. While it is one thing to deliver value and pray you make it on advertising revenue, the mega blogs are a different matter altogether.

Gawker media is one of those mega blogs, owning multiple sites, three of which have recently been sold to other parties so that they can focus on those properties that are doing very well. This bodes for a recession in the Web 2.0 social space, but it can also bode for some very interesting ideas behind the idea of profit or potential of a blog.

While few are surprised that Nick Denton sold Idolator and Gridskipper, the surprise was with Wonkette the political blog. The idea behind that sale was that in six months Americans will elect a new president. This does not mean that political news will stop, but with a long drawn out contest on the democratic side, frankly the election process is getting a bit dull. No one thought that there would be two huge strong political contenders on the democratic ticket, the republican ticket nominee has been solved for months now.

The conventional take as been that Denton smelled a recession and chose to cash out before the recession hits, as he told SAI. Perhaps he’s hunkering for good reason. Conventional wisdom is that in recessionary times, advertisers will flock to tried and true brands, which could exclude many Gawker properties, however influential they may be of the media. “In a difficult market, there’s often a flight to quality and a flight to the familiar,” Mark Kingdon, chief executive officer of Organic, told us in an interview at ad:tech, a digital advertising conference in San Francisco. Source: Wired

For small niche bloggers, the recession will have some influence on the quality of advertising on the web sites that they write at. While we are not John Chow, telling you I make 30K a month, really I make about > 1% of that, the idea of selling out a semi-hot property before the bad news hits is always a good business decision.

What surprises us is that Valleywag is not on the chopping block. We have talked a lot about valleywag and looking at their websense numbers. There is also that nagging pay cut that people who write for gawker media are trying to cope with. Deep linking is the salvation of a web site, people who are just hitting the main page and not interacting with the site is something that should be causing worries in Gawker head office.

It will be interesting to see if anyone else in the mega blog business will try to sell other under performing blogs, or blogs that have a freshness dating on it. It will also be interesting to see if any other properties in the Gawker Media empire will be sold as the recession really starts to hit middle and upper America in the next six months.

Related entries to Valleywag

Hacker News Bans Valleywag
We knew there was something funny with Gawker Media
When Bloggers cross the ethical line

Keywords: valleywag, nick denton, gawker media, deadpool, sites sold, wonkette, idolator, gridskipper, recession, advance sales, marketing, google adsense, advertising