Download Squad

But, what will happen to the majority of the web only content on Wired.com? Since Wired.com seems to feature reposts of articles from the magazine starting a few days after publication and a number of blogs on technology related subjects, we have to wonder if some of the content that duplicates the work of Ars will just disappear or move to Ars completely. The other side of the coin is whether Ars will find itself slowly transitioning into just another department at Wired and whether this was just a way to bring a number of good writers into a major mainstream media outlet in one swoop.

Of course all of this may be moot (and is definitely pure speculation), since many think nothing will change at Ars Technica because Condé Nast hasn't changed any of its other recent acquisitions.

On a side note, this merger/acquisition is very similar to CBS/CNET (which went down earlier this week). CBS is an old school mainstream media house that was looking to expand into the net in an educated way by taking over another network. That network was basically CBS for the web, i.e. one of the original major outlets to helped get real content into a new form of communication. Of course CNET was started as almost a TV network, so they will fit well together. Here we also have two similar media outlets, one a major magazine network with award winning reporting, the other a major web site with magazine style reporting that is only a level of understanding away from winning a Pulitzer (understanding on the part of the Pulitzer committee). Heck you could even compare this to the AOL/Weblogs, Inc acquisition of 2005 (DownloadSquad is part of Weblogs, Inc of AOL). In all three cases you had a larger party who definitely needed the content of the smaller party and a smaller party who would definitely benefit from the resources of the larger party.

via Techmeme