Ars Technica To Wired For $25 Million

Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that technology site Ars Technica has been acquired by Wired. Arrington notes that his sources suggest the price is around $25 million. SAI also has received confirmation on the sale.

Ars will become a sub-brand under the Wired Digital brand and CondéNet will take over ad sales. Ars Technica has a very strong and loyal userbase – this is evident by their continual Digg frontpage status.

This type of acquisition makes sense from the purchaser perspective. Ars isn’t run by one voice that "powers" the brand – rather Ars has multiple writers that contribute to the overall site. When I think of most of the major blogs, there is one (sometimes two) names that are behind the blog. This is why we haven’t seen many acquisitions of these single-force blogs – potential suitors wonder if the blog can exist without the name behind it. We will certainly see some tech blogs acquired this year, there is money around and some of the blogs have large brand recognition.

Here’s Compete’s U.S. Ars Technica unique visitor count: