14 DAY TRIAL // The blogs are turning more and more into a veritable business and this is confirmed by the Internet companies' interest in this content distribution method.
After AOL has paid a confidential amount of money for the 85 blogs which make the Weblogs Inc. empire, with sites like Engadget and Joystiq, VeriSign yesterday acquired Weblogs.com.
This is a "ping" type service that automatically sends users notifications when one of the monitored blogs and sites is updating its content. Weblogs.com was founded by Dave Winer, one of the pioneers of the RSS format.
VeriSign stated in the press release that it plans to use the service to offer safer and more stable communications for blogs and that they will continue to be free; but, in the future, the company intends to introduce fees for supplementary services.
Currently, Weblogs.com sends almost 2 million automatic notifications every day.
VeriSign considers that, although blogs have recorded a boom over the last 12 months, the infrastructure that supports this type of communication hasn't succeeded to keep up with the growth rate. This is why VeriSign has decided to get involved in this field.
VeriSign and AOL are not the only companies which have decided to get actively involved in blogging. Google launched in September a special blog search engine, whose algorithms are specifically designed to keep up with the blogs' update and spawning rate. Google is also the owner of the largest blogging site, Blogger.com.