Technorati Acquires BlogCritics, Gets Into Content Game

Technorati continues to redefine itself under CEO Richard Jalichandra, who joined the company in October 2007. In June they launched Technorati Media, a blog advertising network.

Today they are announcing the acquisition of Blogcritics, a six year old blog network that we first wrote about in 2005. The price, which was all cash, is not being disclosed but our guess is that it is in the $1 million range.

Blogcritics is similar to Salon’s newly launched Open Salon, which lets lots of people write articles from time to time on topics they’re familiar with. The site has had published submissions from 2,300 authors, many of which maintain their own blogs as well. 73,000 articles have been published in the six years since launching. The site draws about 1 million unique monthly visitors who generate 3-4 million page views.

Authors maintain the copyright on their content and grant a perpetual license to Blogcritics.

Technorati will incorporate Blogcritics into its Technorati Media property, which is run by VP Publishing David White. The site already runs some Technorati ads. Over time most or all ad units will be through the Technorati ad network. Eric Olsen, the founder of Blogcritics, and Philip Win, the lead developer, will become Technorati employees.

Jalichandra says that they will likely acquire more content sites in the near future. He also made it clear that there will be a wall between the Media and Search properties, and that no favoritism will be shown to Blogcritics content.