On-the-rise blog network Splashpress Media has just acquired and revamped the popular CSS Star website, as announced on the outfit’s blog:

CSS Star is a free gallery of well-designed websites. The main driving force behind CSS Star is to highlight the best sites, ideas or designs made respecting quality standards. The editors behind CSS Star regularly pick a website that well-designed in terms of aesthetic and user interface.

The site is managed by Ia Lucero, one of the network’s “resident design gurus.”

Visit CSS Star.

Secret merger talks between blog network giant b5media and Technorati fizzled out recently, TechCrunch reports:

Blog search engine Technorati was days away from merging with blog network b5media when the whole deal blew up earlier this week, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The talks with Toronto-based b5media (they’re big in Canada) indicate that it is taking the blog roll-up idea more seriously than we previously thought. If the merger with b5media had gone through, Technorati would have gained a network of 340 blogs.

Technorati has a big name, but is largely associated with a failure to live up to its billing. B5media has relentlessly stuck to its remit and expanded to 340 blogs.

I’ve long since lost faith in this horizontal model, which basically claims that small-scale content sites multiplied n-hundred times add up to a better business than three or four wowsers, or a tight-niched, product-based network, like Glam or TechCrunch. In this case, less is almost certainly more.

Two of Splashpress Media’s prime properties, DevLounge and Wisdump will fuse their energies together—without leaving each other’s domains.

SP Media veteran Thord Daniel Hedengren has taken over the reins at both sites, and the Splashpress official site has this to say:

What made Thord’s plans especially exciting with the takeover of DevLounge was how he wanted to tie up DevLounge in “symbiosis” with Wisdump, with one focusing its content “about” WordPress design, while the other concentrates on “within” WordPress design (tips, tricks, etc). And to physically join these communities, Thord is planning a joint forum: WisLounge.com.

Six Apart, creator of MovableType, Typepad, and Vox has sold off one of its “babies”, LiveJournal. The popular blogging and social platform is now in the hands of Russian media company SUP.

Blog Herald’s Tony Hung has an insight on the acquisition:

You may be wondering how a blogging company will do a Russian company like SUP at its helm.

...In a place where the political and journalistic organs are not as transparent as other places in the world, coupled with a sophisticated and technologically savvy audience, it seemed like blogging had an important role to play both inside and outside politics, as a legitimate “alternative” form of journalism and media…

With that kind of background, I suspect that LiveJournal is in better hands than most bloggers might be concerned about.  But time will really tell, I suppose.

Blog network Splashpress Media is continuing to stamp its mark on the blogosphere with key additions and improvements over the past several days. Here’s a handy guide to what SP Media has accomplished:

Launched

• Blogosphere News—From the network’s Editor-in-Chief, J. Angelo Racoma: “With Blogosphere News, members can submit their own entries, and these can be anything related to blogging–new blog launches, blogging tips, blogging news, blogger events, software, widgets, how-tos, videos, and the like. Users also get to vote on other members’ stories that they think are worth reading. Bad stories (spam, duplicates, useless stuff) can be “buried”. The more popular entries would then be promoted to the front page. You know the Digg system? Yes, it’s the same!”


• Erati—This blog on all things TV forms a cornerstone of SP Media’s new celeb blog network.


• Manchester United News—A new site similar to Digg and powered by the ManUtd Blog.

Acquired

• Devlounge—A popular design-oriented community site to be managed now by Thord Daniel Hedengren.


• Splogspot—A search engine for spam blogs. Quite a novel idea!


• Blogging Pro—The first of 5 heavyweight blogs acquired by Splashpress from Bloggy Network; the others are the next four blogs. BP is a mecca for blogging-related topics, such as personal blogging, blog monetization, and technical aspects of blogging.


• Forever Geek—One of Bloggy Network’s most loved blogs; for geeks and by geeks.


• Celebrific—The acquisition of this celeb blog will reinforce Splashpress’ commitment to building a strong roster of entertainment/showbiz blogs.


• Filmsy—Want reviews of the latest box office hits and disc releases? Get ‘em here. Filmsy rounds up an entertainment-centric trio together with Erati and Celebrific.


• BFeedMe—Blog readers are devourers of information, and the info on this blog is all about…food!

Together with this acquisitions, Splashpress Media has also been joined by David Peralty, Bloggy Network’s Director of Communications, as reported by Blog Herald.

Relaunched

• Celebrity Chefs—The fourth blog in Splashpress’ showbiz network-in-a-network…


• Hollywood Blog—...and this makes it five!


• Japan Blog—All about the Asian nation, from gadgets to society.


• Bloggy Award—This good ol’ mainstay of Splashpress has received a purty facelift!

Discovery Communications (of the Discovery Channel fame) has just purchased TreeHugger for an estimated $15 million.

From the BlogHerald report:

The site will become part of Planet Green, which includes the first 24/7 eco-lifestyle TV network launching in 50 million homes in early 2008.

Treehugger.com has 1.4 million unique monthly visitors and has served over 50 million pages. It also has an archive of 13,500 posts.

The b5media blog network has just announced its purchase of Level9 Media Inc., which operates its own blog network that includes the popular Starked group.

According to the press release issued by b5media, the acquisition is “the largest one made to date” by the network, which is the third-largest blog network, attracting more than three million unique visitors per month. This development will further cement b5media’s huge presence in the blogosphere.

From the said article, Level9’s blogs include:

Starked (NYC, San Francisco, LA and Washington, D.C.), which deliver industry news and gossip specific to each city. LA is focused on Hollywood and the film/television industry; NYC on media and publishing; and San Francisco on technology and money.

Dejuiced: Sports. All the sports news, gossip, players’ dirty laundry, events, and chat you can handle from serious sports fanatics.

Sirened: Level9’s answer to the never ending and ongoing life in political satire. Additionally, the site will also cover news on “corporate propaganda” because we really don’t think Enron was the first or the last of its kind.

Citizen Circus: A few familiar features and a few new ones, it’s social news for the mainstream audience who just want to find the most interesting stories and share their own.

To help push their efforts further, Venture Capital invested $4.5 million to help heave the promising UK blog network which draws close to 3 million readers daily. Such investments made from generous donors who see a promising future for aggressive blogging investments done today has been the obvious reason for such an enormous investment.

Wagner told the Sunday Times: “There are businesses that could have been massively successful but they were denied the resources to fast-track a fabulous idea. There’s got to be a different way of doing this.”

With the investment, a lot of things are being heard here and there as to what would be the next move of Shiny Media and where the money will be going to. With so much plans architected by Ashely Norris, answers to such rumors and queries are sure to be answered in the next couple of days.

I’ll be speaking with Ashley Norris tomorrow to find out more on Shiny’s plans. Commenting on his blog he says: “We have come a very long way in a short space of time with no money. The investment will help us make some of our more ambitious dreams realities.”

[tags]blog network, shiny media, mergers, acquisitions[/tags]

CSSVault a site that has been known to store different uniquely designed stuff has been acquired by Hostgator. CSSVault is a prized catch for Hostgator, considering that it boasts of a page rank of 9 with a daily page view averaging 12,000 to 17,000, 5,000 of which is unique.

“While I helped facilitate this sale a while ago (and there was a bit of a ‘quiet period’ going on with it), the go ahead to go public with it is here.

CSSVault, the venerable CSS directory was sold by BloggyNetwork to HostGator Web Hosting for a smooth $100,000.

Revenue and traffic are not going to be disclosed, but lets say the strong brand and strong (actual, and not wishful) potential was a big reason HostGator purchased it.

I will have a follow up interview with Brent Oxley, HostGator’s president soon. He has promised me that the site will be revamped soon. This isn’t a simple purchase – it’s an investment.”

The site was reportedly sold for $100,000.00 and is considered a bargain. With the potential revenue that Hostgator can get out of the site, this purchase price is bound to be covered up in no time.

Ahmed at Tech Soapbox argues that the time of blog networks has passed. The luster is gone, and while blog networks were the hot thing on the Web in the past year, it’s time for online entrepreneurs to think of other business models.

I remember a time when Blog Networks were the it thing. Everyone and their mother was setting up blog networks. People actually cared when a name was changed from ‘Pajama Media’ to ‘Open Source Media’ (though I do agree OSM doesn’t sound very good).

Blogs were the path to easy riches.

About time reality set in.

Perusing around, I came across this sale: Parents Behaving Badly for sale. On its own not very notable, but what was interesting was that they were under the b5Media umbrella. For those that don’t remember, the network recently announced 2 million in funding.

This sale sets off some questions.

These days we’re seeing blogs and blog networks being sold left and right. Heck even this very blog you’re reading has passed hands at least one time. Does this mean then that the golden age of blog networks has, indeed, passed? Does this mean that those who have sold know something that the rest of us don’t? Does this mean blog networks are going the way of the dodo?

Well, perhaps in a way, yes. That’s why people are looking for new things to do, new ways to earn. People foresee that there are bigger things and better things.

But then again there are still those blog and blog networks—those brands!—that remain strong. It’s hard to be a Blog Herald, or a Blogging Pro, or even a b5media or a Weblogs, Inc. because these are already established in the blogosphere.

That’s why there are the new startups that try to be different. The focus today is not just blogs and blogging, but new media and social media!

That’s why blog networks are not necessarily passé. Blog networks are just evolving, just like the rest of the world—and the Web.