VeriSign's dollar signs for Weblogs.com

VeriSign has agreed to purchase Dave Winer's Weblogs.com ping service for $2.3 million, the company said Friday.

The ping service automatically notifies subscribers when new content is posted to a Web site or blog. VeriSign said it would continue to operate Weblogs.com as an openly available service. (It's been a banner week for acquisitions of entities with "Weblogs" in their names. America Online says it is acquiring Weblogs Inc.)

Speculation abounded on the Web as rumors of the deal surfaced. Most of the conversations revolved around two points--what exactly did VeriSign want with the service, and how would Winer, an influential blogger and sometime critic of large corporations, keep the spirit of his service alive?

Winer, one of the pioneers behind the RSS technology used to distribute Web content, said on his blog Friday that VeriSign "can and will do a much better job of running the ping center than I have been able to, and this is the perfect example of individual innovators (myself in this case) working with large companies in ways that leverage the strength of both."

Blog community response:

"VeriSign is sort of the antithesis of companies betting on decentralization, preferring to look for ways to manage large or complex systems in the middle. With the growth of 'pinging' RSS (and other) feeds, this puts VeriSign right in the middle again. The trick will be how they plan to add value from that central position."
--Techdirt

"So what's the business model for what until now has been a free service? Basic pings will remain free to submit and to retrieve; in fact, current users shouldn't see any change. Eventually, VeriSign will add premium services."
--PaidContent.org

"Verisign is interested in blogs and RSS (another of their acquisitions in this space will be announced soon) and it's not hard to see why Dave would sell weblogs.com (the site needs some firm financial backing to keep from buckling under the ever-increasing strain of all those pings), but to Verisign? To me, Verisign embodies the idiocy and ineptitude of the BigCos Dave often rails against...the BigCo to end all BigCos."
--Kottke.org