There’s drinks all round today in content mill land with news that Yahoo has acquired Associated Content for a very sweet $100 million.
Associated Content (AC) launched in 2007 and took $21 million in funding over three rounds from Softbank Capital, Cannaan Partners, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.
AC is one of a generation of startups, including Demand Media, dubbed “content mills” by the mainstream media. The companies took the old blog network model then turned it upside down, creating mega sites with a lot of content (think Huffington Post, but much broader.)
AC’s exit to Yahoo offers Yahoo a cost effective content base as the former search giant seeks to reposition itself as a stronger content provider against AOL.
For the content producing market, it offers the first serious exit in the space since the end of the global financial crisis.
