Ars Brevis, Vita Longa

Ars Tech was bought today by Wired (aka Conde Nast ) for $25m, which follows closely on the heels of the CNet /CBS acquisition.

As one wag suggested on Twitter, Wired likes quality tech journalism so much they went out and bought some

Big picture - its rollup time in the tech blogosphere, as we noted before there are too many blogs trying to do the same thing, so a shakeout was inevitable.
What is more interesting is that but a few short weeks ago all the talk was of raising funding, and Mr Arrington bemoaned this as he wished to do a roll-up apparently but the spate of takeovers implies trade sale is the preferred route (lower price, more synergies).

The race, as they say, is on.

One wonders where TechCrunch will be when the dust settles, having been the original ones to float rollup as an idea - I wonder if the New York Times will buy them . In fact their strategy of distribution via MSM is an interesting use of the old partnership "3rd way" play rather than rollup.