GigaOm buys PaidContent from Guardian

When Guardian News & Media acquired ContentNext, parent company of PaidContent, in 2008, some industry observers raised their eyebrows at what seemed to be an ill-fit match. After all, Guardian Media Group is best known for owning time-honored British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, while PaidContent is an online entity that covers the forefront of digital media. “I had trouble seeing why a general interest news organization, even a forward-looking one, would buy what was essentially a network of niche sites geared toward media and technology executives,” wrote PBS MediaShift’s Dorian Benkoil. The mismatch became glaringly obvious in November when the Guardian said that ContentNext was up for sale and that it would instead focus on its Guardian brand in the U.S. Speculation about the fate of paidContent became rampant, with rumors pointing to possible buyers including AOL and CBS Interactive.

But it appears that ContentNext has finally found the perfect match. GigaOm announced it’s acquiring the assets of ContentNext from the Guardian. “The ethos of paidContent and our company are in sync,” wrote GigaOm founder Om Malik. “GigaOm’s core belief is that as connectivity becomes ubiquitous, it changes everything from society to business to we the people. PaidContent from the very beginning has been built on the idea that connectedness is and will change media. It makes perfect sense for us to team up.” Industry watchers agreed that the move made sense. “There’s some pleasing logic to a GigaOm/PaidContent rollup,” wrote AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka. “Both businesses started as influential one-man blogging operations, then added staff and moved into related operations such as conferences.”

• Why we are buying paidContent (GigaOm)
  
• GigaOM Acquires PaidContent: Interview With GigaOM CEO Paul Walborsky (Wired)
  
• GigaOM + PaidContent = Perfect Sense (PBS MediaShift)
  
• GigaOM And paidContent Join Forces (paidContent)
  
• GigaOM expands reach, influence with paidContent acquisition (ZDNet)
  
• GigaOm acquires media blog paidContent (CNET News)
  
• Is GigaOM Buying paidContent? (AllThingsD)
  
• GigaOM Acquires paidContent (NY Times)
  
• GigaOm and paidContent: Going Global (mediabistro)
  
• GigaOM buying ContentNext Media, will pick up paidContent, mocoNews, and other sites (VentureBeat)