Cat leaves bag: Yahoo does a deal with with Nick Denton to distribute some of his blogs. Staci at Paid Content has the details:
In an interview, Scott Moore, head of news and finance for Yahoo, said the Gawker move is part of the strategy with Yahoo News to become “more blog aware and blogcentric.” … It’s not an exclusive deal, something Yahoo shies away from when it comes to licensing content….
Why not just buy Gawker? “For one thing, Nick wants to be independent. That’s important to him,” says Moore. Beyond that, “at this point, we’re not in the mode of acquiring blog content. We would rather work with as many as we can.” In fact, Yahoo wants to go broader and deeper, eventually working with smaller blogs “empowering people who don’t buy ink by the barrel.”
My emphasis above: This is the smarter way to jump on the blog train. AOL buys a handful. Yahoo wants to have relationships with many more.
You can’t buy enough blogs. And you shouldn’t want to. Part of the value of blogs is their independence. And in a medium that is doubling every five months, owning 50 or 100 or even 1,000 blogs is nothing. Having a relationship with thousands more will be worth more.
