Teens in Tech, a blogging network founded by 16 year old Daniel Brusilovsky, has acquired the Youth Bloggers Network (YBN). YBN consists of a network of over 100 young bloggers, and was founded by Patrick DeVivo, who is also a young entrepreneur. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but given how similar the networks are I suspect that if there was any monetary exchange it was very small – it sounds like the two networks are banding together to help establish traction.
Teens in Tech is meant to offer teenagers a simple way to blog their thoughts in an atmosphere that is both safe and receptive to their ideas. The site launched back in August in a private alpha, and has yet to open signups up to the public (Brusilovsky says that the gates will temporally open this weekend, but that it will become private once more after that). While the company had initially planned to open to the public last winter, it is currently exploring building its own CMS, and is also working to establish an advertising program for its publishers.
As I wrote when the site first launched, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of unique technology behind Teens in Tech – the site is essentially a multiuser WordPress install, with some custom tweaks like an RSS feed that pulls from all of the network blogs. That said, there is clearly a dedicated community of teens keen on blogging. I’m just not sure how Teens in Tech is going to build a viable business out of them – given how many free publishing platforms are available elsewhere, it’s going to be hard to get teens (who aren’t exactly swimming in cash) to pay to blog. And at scale it’s going to be hard for Teens in Tech to ensure that its safe community of teenagers stays a community of teenagers.