Rumor: AOL Looking to Buy Mashable
Gawker lit the interwebs on fire today with a rumor that AOL is looking to buy the ever-popular social media news site Mashable.
So far, neither camp has commented, but Gawker reported that they are hearing from a source at AOL that the "two sides are whispering."
However, while a number of sites are reporting that the deal is underway, no one has received any comments on the record despite efforts to do so — namely uber blogger Robert Scoble.
Via his Twitter feed, Scoble tweeted, "I am having a tough time getting any other news about Mashable. Tried calling Pete Cashmore but his phone goes into voicemail." Shortly after that, he tweeted, "I am hearing now from another source who has a source inside AOL that it isn't being confirmed from inside AOL. If you know anything call."
Mashable was launched in July 2005 by Cashmore and the site has grown to 8 million unique visitors, 12 million page views monthly and 1,9+ million followers on Twitter.
Rumors are getting some reaction to those semi-Mashable competitors:
"Despite being a competitor of sorts, Mashable deserve the success. It’s also wonderful to see a blog in our field grow to such heights, something we plan to do and surpass in our our way," wrote The Next Web, another popular source for technology and social media news. "Whether selling to AOL is the right move, time will tell, but this wouldn’t be AOL’s first blog acquisition, the company acquired Weblogs, Inc., in 2005, taking ownership of another prominent technology blog, Engadget."
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