Wow, it feels like 1999 again. PaidContent says that AOL is going to pay $20 million or more to buy the Weblogs Inc. network. Earlier this year the New York Times paid (overpaid, some would argue) $410 million for About.com, another network of blog-like sites.
According to Paid Content, Weblogs Inc. also talked to MSN and Yahoo and News Corp., which means those companies might be looking to buy their own blog networks.
I’ve got a lot of unhappy experience with big-media companies buying out content producers, and for the most part my experience says that the people who actually do the work get little or nothing out of the deal. (Steve Rubel had the same thought this morning.) I hope the Weblogs Inc. deal is an exception.
I’ve got two blogs here at edbott.com world headquarters. Somehow I don’t think that the big media companies are going to come sniffing around here anytime soon.
More thoughts here.
Ed Bott 
I always end up unsubscribing from Weblogs Inc blogs, as they have entire blog entries that are nothing but ads for other blogs. Which I find incredibly annoying. Do you find that acceptible?