Technorati Acquires Personal Bee

San Francisco, CA: Technorati, the world's leading search service for blogs and social media, has announced the acquisition of Personal Bee, a service that allows users to collect and publish news, entertainment and information from the Web. The merger of the two companies represents Technorati's first major acquisition.

Technorati currently tracks more than 72 million blogs and 230 million tagged media objects in real time. The service brings together video, podcasts, photos, music and other media from the Web based on users' interests.

By joining forces, Technorati and Personal Bee hope to better serve consumers and brands, enabling more engagement and participation in global conversations.

"Technorati is driving the understanding of the real-time web," said David L. Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, in a press release. "With the addition of the Personal Bee technology, we are creating tools to facilitate the growth of this Live Web, which is the conversational part of the Internet that is dynamic, rather than static."

Personal Bee is a media platform where users can publish or curate sites around topics. Stories from citizen and mainstream media can be collected and published for interest-based communities.

Personal Bee founder and CEO Ted Shelton said in a press release that the acquisition by Technorati means "we are adding flexible publishing capabilities so that everyone can find conversations, track up-and-coming ideas and stories, and customize the Live Web in any way they like." Mr. Shelton is now Vice President of Business Development at Technorati leading the integration of the Personal Bee platform into the Technorati product offerings.

For brands, the acquisition will make it easier to publish and interact with consumers. The addition of Personal Bee will allow brands to deploy conversational advertising and interactive ads that invite participation and conversation from consumers. It also allows brands to create topic specific micro-sites that feature promotional ads, current news and citizen content including videos, podcasts and photos. Brands will be able to curate the micro-sites and filter objectionable material.

The acquisition reflects the growing trend of citizen content creation. The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently reported that 57% of teens who use the Internet create content through blogs or websites posting original artwork, photography, stories or videos. As this generation ages, most Internet users will also be content creators.

"This is about a democratization of media," Mr. Sifry said in a press release. "We are entering an era where many new publishers and many new voices exist on the Web, and which provides all of us with extraordinary insight into how people are interpreting and reacting to their world, all in real time."

The terms of the acquisition deal have not been disclosed.

Source:

Technorati Announces the Acquisition of Personal Bee http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/4/prweb518447.htm