The blogosphere is buzzing with rumours that social media news site Mashable will be acquired soon by Time Warner’s CNN division.
Reuters blogger Felix Salmon wrote late Sundaythat the deal willlikely be announced on Tuesday morning. Officials from Mashabledeclined to comment while CNN spokespeople denied that an announcementwould be made on Tuesday.
Early this morning, however, Mashable’s executive editor Adam Ostrow“liked” Salmon’s Reuters blog posting on Facebook, perhaps giving a slyhint that a deal is, in fact, in the works and close to completion.
Privately owned Mashable has amassed a sizeable Web following since itlaunched just seven years ago. It started out covering social media andtechnology news exclusively but has since widened its coverage toinclude broader news content.
CNN signaled its intention to focus more of its content on the mobilenews market when it recently paid a reported $20 million to purchaseZite,a Vancouver startup that makes an iPad app for customizing mobilenews content. An acquisition of Mashable would similarly shift more of CNN’s strategy towards the social media content market, broadening itscoverage away from just traditional political and business news.