Today’s internet is so dominated by Facebook and Google it’s hard to imagine how they could possibly be superseded. This infographic from CenturyLink reminds us that on the web, nothing is forever. The past giants from AOL to Yahoo! have all experienced life cycles, and according to the averages below Facebook has about 3 years until it dies! Maybe we should be taking Facebook up on their offer last Thursday to download an expanded archive of all our data after all.

Do you think Facebook will suffer the same fate as these giants?

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It is being reported that CNN is in late stage talks to acquire social news and technology website Mashable for as much as $200m. If true it will be one of the last big independent blogs to be snapped up by a larger media owner. AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315m last year and in 2010 it also snapped up TechCrunch for around $30m.

Mashable pulls in a considerably larger audience than Techcrunch hence the speculated $200m price tag, which could herald a multimillion pound pay day for British founder Pete Cashmore. Read More »

The fallout from the AOL acquisition of Techcrunch continues as former writer, Sarah Lacy, launches a news site, called PandoDaily, which is being dubbed “TechCrunch 2.0 by some.

PandoDaily, which will focus almost exclusively on tech start-ups, launches today and is backed by a number of investors including TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, who left the site he founded in September unhappy (but richer) after the earlier sale to AOL. Read More »

24/7 Wall St has published its list of the 25 most valuable blogs in the US. It is an interesting list with interesting price tags attached showing that blogs continue to be huge business. Combined they are worth almost $1 billion.

While the Huffington Post is no longer represented, it is so much bigger than that these days and seeems to have ascended to become a news organisation in its own right, the list shows how these well funded and increasingly well resourced sites compete with traditional media. Read More »

Reports this weekend suggest Google could be lining up to buy its one time rival Yahoo!. Google is said to have spoken to at least two private equity firms about a deal to buy Yahoo!, which has been in a state of turmoil since chief executive Carol Bartz was sacked in early September.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and its partners have held initial discussions, but have yet to come up with a concrete proposal to buy the firm. Read More »

AOL is expected to surpass its quarterly earnings forecast, thanks to gains made in display advertising sales, according to analysts at financial firm UBS.

The much-maligned media company is to report revenues of $532m (£340m) this quarter, rather than the predicted $525m (£335m). The boost comes from year-over-year growth of its domestic display sales, up 21% for the quarter. Read More »

Last year Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington sold his tech news business to AOL for around $30m, according to reports. Things went a bit rocky and very early on people were wondering how long he would last at AOL as he threw public punches at the media firm while ostensibly employed by it.

The answer was not much longer as Arrington. Earlier this month AOL parted company as this story details: Barry Diller Skewers AOL For Firing Michael Arrington. That was a Techcrunch story, by the way. It was reported everywhere including the New York Times. Read More »

Content platforms evolve, splitting and dissipating audiences as they do. This has been happening in the UK ever since William Caxton’s printing press put the town crier out of work. Fast forward to Channel 4 competing against ITV for advertisers in 1982; the rise of 24-hour news channels; then the competition from digital TV, web; and today from mobile.

Digital technology sped up the process so fundamentally — allowing ad networks to offer ever-cheaper inventory from proliferating aggregators, leading to ‘low-rent’ click-throughs. These make the media buyer look good by driving down the cost per click. Read More »

US news and current affairs website Huffington Post – which was bought by AOL for $315m in February – is to launch a UK edition in the summer.

In a surprise announcement at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, founder Arianna Huffington explained that the new investment meant that they could finally expand outside the US. Read More »

A little while ago I asked the question will your next CV be an infographic? A lot of you liked that post as it was widely shared. If you haven’t already heard by now the answer is a big fat yes courtesy of Chris Spurlock.

A couple of weeks after I asked that question Spurlock saw his  infographic  resume (below) go viral after appearing on the Huffington Post’s college site, HuffPost College.  The next step? Huffpo hired the journalism gradate to design infographics. Nice job. Read More »