AOL has purchased another Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey company Blogsmith. Blogsmith is the publishing platform behind Weblogs, Inc. blog network, which the folks there like calling a magazine published in the blog format.
While Weblogs, Inc. became an online ‘magazine’ company, Blogsmith remained a separate company as a publishing platform. When AOL bought only Weblogs, Inc., Brian Alvey thought that AOL did that just to hire Calacanis. Though Blogsmith remained the publishing platform for the network, it also provided platforms to other customers separately.
Whatever the case is, Alvey writes in his blog about AOL’s plans with Blogsmith. He says;
So what is AOL going to do with Blogsmith? Whatever they want to do with it.
Is AOL going to release Blogsmith to the public as a Typepad/WordPress/YouTube/Wal-Mart/Starbucks-killer or not? Yes.
I hope that clears up all of the questions surrounding AOL’s acquisition of Blogsmith and the product’s history.
I have no doubts that Blogsmith is a good software. However, whether it will be as popular as Typepad is altogether another story. Having said that, I believe AOL’s purchase of Blogsmith is a very good move.
