AOL buys into blogging

America Online is believed to have paid £25m for Weblogs Inc

America Online has agreed to acquire Weblogs Inc, a network of product and trade blogs including the popular gadget-oriented Engadget and the automotive Autoblog. 

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, but some reports suggest a sale price of $25m.

Weblogs has been operating since January 2004 and offers 85 topical blogs. Its network generates over 30 million page views a month.

The venture will remain operating independently, but links to the websites will be added to other properties inside AOL's network.

The site works with paid freelance bloggers. The company competes with Gawker Media, publisher of the Gizmodo gadget blog. 

"The whole point about blogs is that they're not part of big media," said Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media. "Consolidation defeats the purpose. It's way too early. Like a decade too early." He added that Gawker is "not for sale" . 

VNU, the parent company of vnunet.com, has a licensing deal with Gizmodo and earlier this week launched several European affiliates of the popular gadget blog. 

The Weblogs acquisition represents the largest transaction of a blogging company to date. Blogs are increasingly catching the attention of traditional publishers as the size of their audience increases.

Yahoo and Google are both trying to c apitalise on the new publishing format. Google last month launched a separate blog search engine and many blogs use its Adwords advertising programme.

Yahoo said in August that it would be launching a similar programme.