Michael Arrington is reporting that Yahoo has acquired BuzzTracker, a small news aggregation site which I have always considered more of a news scraping site, for a rumored $5 milllion. Under the acquisition, Alan Warms, CEO of BuzzTracker’s parent company Participate Media, will join Yahoo as Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo News.
I’m with Arrington here and am a bit surprised that Yahoo did not go after a more original news aggregation and ranking system, like Techmeme, TailRank or NewsVine, but if their intention is to add a Google News type aggregation and reading system to the uber-popular Yahoo News service, then perhaps a small investment in BuzzTracker’s talent is worth it.
The name is also quite brandable, especially for Yahoo, which already has the Yahoo Buzz Index, and its 10 years of search trend measurement. Perhaps BuzzTracker will become more than just news aggregation for Yahoo and they’ll finally release their blog search under the Yahoo BuzzTracker umbrella.
It should also be noted that BuzzTracker is a user of MyBlogLog, and perhaps the MyBlogLog tracking, especially AdSense tracking, identified the site as a profitable acquisition and nesting ground for Yahoo Publisher Network contextual and display advertising distribution. Make your money back quickly, acquire a nice brand, and bring in some talent… not a bad deal. Perhaps 🙂
