Time Warner Marches Upon Blogosphere

Okay, so that headline is a bit much, but today's development is one of those that makes me a bit nervous because it represents Big Business taking control of the undercurrent - in this case, the blog world.

AOL announced today it bought Weblogs, which owns Engadget, Autoblog, and 85 others, for $25 million.

So, that means that Time Warner now has control over:

• leaders in mainstream media (i.e. Time, CNN)
• leaders in the entertainment industry (Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, HBO)
• the biggest ISP (AOL)
• the cable lines both kinds of content pass through (Time Warner Cable)
• and now, with this purchase, a nice little piece of the blogosphere.

Of course, companies like Sony and Disney are certainly right up there when it comes to inordinate power through controlling both content creation and delivery methods, but they arguably haven't shown quite as much interest in buying up the blogosphere. Yet.

Technorati tags: blogs, journalism, AOL