New York Times to Buy About.com for $410 million: Go figure. I’m about to prove my theory that you should never trust a reporter (or a blogger) with math. This is my second attempt to do this: Okay, let’s do some calculating. The NYT is paying $410 million for a network of 500 weblogs that collectively have 22 million visitors each month. $410 million / 500 = $820,000 per weblog.
Update: My coding and math are messed up. I’ll post my last sentence again in a moment.
Update II: Okay. Another way to look at the math. They have 22,000,000 unique visitors per month. Receiving $410 million in cash means each unique visitor (clarification: or, perhaps, a better way to put it is, “the average visitor”) per month is being valued as $18.64. (410,000,000/22,000,000)
Update III: Enough of my faux analysis. Rafat and Staci actually have some legitimate insight at PaidContent.org. For example, they insightfully recall the last
conversational media venture of the NYT, “Abuzz” — which, as I recall was A-bust. (Hey, but I’m not one to throw rocks.)
Update IV: VC Fred Wilson thinks it’s a smart deal. I’ll take his word for it.
(via: BuzzMachine)
