Blogger Hits Jackpot with Sweet Deal from Bankrate

Reports have surfaced that Bankaholic.com, a WordPress blog run by Johns Wu (alone) is selling for $15 million to BankRate. That's quite a deal for Wu, I'd say. According to paidContent.org, Wu gets $12.4 million up front, with another $2.5 million possible earnout over the next 12 months.

Should You Buy Links?

This old chestnut. There is a post over at Search Engine Land by Danny Sullivan entitled "Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker". To cut a long story short, some guy tries to broker a link deal with Danny, seemingly not knowing who Danny is, and Danny plays him along. Danny reports him to the Google spam team. For the sake of furthering discussion, I'll play…

Does Steve Jobs Have Nine Lives?

Although I have ruthlessly defended new media's potential for legitimacy as a news source, nobody said citizen journalism was a flawless concept. Today a story was posted at iReport.com claiming that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a severe heart attack. He did not.

Gawker Lays Off Staff & Brags About It!

I'm going to be blunt here. The press coverage of the Gawker layoff memo is facinating in that they believe everything they are told and then proudly write about it! Isn't it a bit curious that Nick is predicting doom and gloom while his sales are way up from last year and then encourages his writers to write articles on this news?

Friendster Gets Friendly with Facebook

Friendster announced today that it is now supporting both Facebook and Opensocial apps. Integration with these has now become part of the Friendster Developer Program, though they've been supporting OpenSocial since August.