MediaWeek broke the story of Celebrity Baby Blog being acquired by People.com. Alas, no estimated price, even from the usually resourceful paidContent.org.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch has some traffic data:

Since February its traffic has shot up—to 6.9 million pageviews and 720,000 unique visitors in April, according to comScore.

FM Publishing lists 8.48 million pageviews per month.

Here's our rundown of other celebrity gossip blogs:

#				Blog		T Rank		Alexa
1				TMZ.com		14		608
2				PerezHilton.com		20		415
3				Jezebel		60		5,870
4				Just Jared		75		1,273
5				The Superficial		165		1,311
6				Dlisted		171		2,146
7				Defamer		199		7,989
8				POPSUGAR		312		3,563
9				Celebrity Baby Blog		806		9,359
10				Go Fug Yourself		1,142		9,380
11				Pop Crunch		1,233		7,013
12				Egotastic!		1,327		918
13				What Would Tyler Durden Do		1,515		1,456
14				Pink Is The New Blog		1,732		10,750
15				Cele|bitchy		2,181		12,717
16				Hollywoodtuna		4,032		1,913
17				cityrag		5,499		9,251
18				The Blemish		6,369		5,661
19				The Bastardly		7,897		5,778
		Legend
				Blogcosm profile of this blog
				Link directly to the blog

Here's an idea for a blog (and company) that I'd never thought of before, but makes perfect sense: analyze imports for clues to a company's business. Yesterday's attention-getting headline: New 3G Apple iPhone Arrives in North America:

Since mid-March, Apple Inc. and its logistics partners have imported 188 ocean containers of a product type never before declared on its shipping manifests.

Here's an example of the level of detail they provide:

The initial shipments were followed on March 27, April 28, May 6 and May 17 with an additional 44 containers—each containing an estimated 40,000 units of the new phone. The sixteen containers imported by Apple Inc. itself—as opposed to the Quanta subsidiary—were delivered on March 19 and 27 to the Jonestown, Pa. facilities of Ingram Micro, Apple’s U.S. distribution partner.

Unfortunately the blog post reads like a press release, but perhaps that will change now that they're getting some attention from other blogs.

ImportGenius lists 2 products on their site:

• SupplySpy: $199/month to monitor a all shipments from a single supplier or importer
• ImportScan: $399/month for unlimited access per commodity type

Part of their pitch:

"Within minutes of subscribing, you'll have access to lists of all of your competitor's suppliers and all of your supplier's customers in the United States."

Looks useful; I wish them luck.

Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera somewhat humorously recounts the events leading to the addition of the site's search tool:

Hours after Techmeme launched in 2005, search uberblogger Danny Sullivan remarked "there's no keyword search facility that I can see. I want that, and soon!" Nobody wants to let Danny down, so I got right to work and 32 months later, a search box now sits atop the site.

Well, actually, work on search was rather seriously delayed...Techmeme was focused primarily on surfacing the newsworthy, not providing Yet Another Blog/News Search.

As an increasing number of users became increasingly dependent on Techmeme, one common use case emerged: people wanted simply to recall things they'd seen on the site early.

At TechCrunch, Michael Arrington describes the new search feature:

Results are returned only for items that have appeared as full headlines on Techmeme, in reverse chronological order. Headlines appearing only in "Discussion" are excluded. And basic search only returns results that appear in the title of the item or in the first couple of sentences.

There is also an advanced search feature, however, that allows for full text search of the underlying blog post or article. Users can also search just by date, author, source, etc.

With the addition of the search tool, Brad Linder of Download Squad finally sees Techmeme as broadly useful:

...Techmeme has historically done a pretty lousy job of telling you yesterday's big stories. Or last week's. Or last years. Because the site has lacked any sort of a search function...

The launch of the search tool actually makes Techmeme a site worth visiting if you're not just trying to figure out which stories Download Squad, TechCrunch, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, and Engadget are covering today.

Stan Schroeder of Mashable decides he doesn't have to visit Technorati anymore:

...Techmeme search effectively kills the last big reason I've had to visit Technorati. Techmeme now has it all. Tracking news on blogs? Check. Following conversations/trackbacks? Check....Top list of blogs, if you care for that sort of thing? Check. And now there's search, which has lately been the only reason why I'd go to Technorati - to quickly search what the blogosphere has been saying about a topic.

And he predicts:

...with Technorati's track record of weird updates or just plain old stagnation, in a year or two it might find itself overrun by Techmeme.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has the scoop: Breaking: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires Ars Technica.

Ars Technica is really more of an online-only tech magazine rather than a blog, but they've long been an independent voice so certainly qualify as "new media" (whatever that means!).

Here's how they stack up against Wired's existing blogs, per Technorati:

#				Blog		T Rank
1		?		Ars Technica		7
2				Threat Level		46
3				Gadget Lab		70
4				Wired Science		74
5				The Underwire		169
6				Danger Room		182
7				Epicenter		402
8				Game|Life		425
9				Compiler		577
10				Listening Post		733
11				Autopia		1,422
12				Geekdad		4,148
13				Beyond the Beyond		6,630
		Legend
				Link directly to the blog
?				Arguably not a blog (what do you think?)

Unwritten rule #1 of blogging: link to your source. We caught CNET breaking the rule last month. (They actually agreed, and added a link.) Yesterday, MG Siegler thinks he caught Ars Technica:

I saw the map and thought of one thing: the game Risk. As such I wrote a short article on VentureBeat on Friday with that as the main crux: The iPhone is winning at the game of Risk.

Today, Sunday, 2 full days later, Ars Technica comes back with an article, with their own picture dubbed "iRisk."

This case is in a gray area: it's not hard news, just one particular approach to a story.

A commenter is not so sure any copying was done:

You don't seem to be quite as original as you think you are, either. Some site called the iPhone Blog (which I found by Googling iPhone world domination risk after reading your piece) has been playing iPhone Risk --complete with stylized map-- since February, including an update with all this latest info on May 7. Could it be that you and Fortune ripped them off, or could it be that lots of people make the "entering new markets is kinda like Risk" association?

http://www.theiphoneblog.com/tag/iphone-risk/

Matthew Ingram got an explanation from Ars Technica's founder:

[Ken Fisher] said that Siegler wasn't the only blog to make the comparison between the iPhone and the game of Risk...and that therefore he didn't deserve a link ... Ars didn't see Siegler's post and wrote its own version at about the same time (the site said it was published later because editors were busy).

An update to Siegler's post claims lots of support by email:

I'm not at liberty to share many of them, but lets just say A LOT of people, well respected and well placed people working in the industry out there have the exact same thoughts.

But isn't that exactly the kind of (non) evidence that blogs are rightly skeptical about? Ars may well be a repeat offender, but until the evidence is out in the open, I'll stick with "innocent until proven guilty".

Leading VC blogger Fred Wilson posted some advantages of the Disqus comment plug-in that his firm invested in (based on his usage on the blog!):

1) Threaded discussions

2a) Email Replies

2b) Email Replies for Commenters

3) Shared profiles

(Read the post for details.)

In the comments, Abe Murray noted some missing features that are a showstopper for him:

1. Trackbacks. a huge deal, and totally missing.

2. Seamless data portability. Grab all wordpress / blogger comments on setup and create the Disqus comments for these. If I want to leave Disqus, create wordpress / blogger comments so my blog is still complete.

You should win users by being the best, not by being sticky.

Another commenter ("Andy C") linked to his April 9 post of 25 reasons you should use disqus.

Douglas Karr raised an even bigger showstopper in a comment to that post:

One GIANT REASON not to use Disqus: Your site isn't able to capitalize on User generated content since the comments are loaded via JavaScript. Commenting is a powerful tool for search engines - and you're missing all of it!

Now - if someone builds some robust API blog integration where the comments are loaded server-side, that may make up all the difference. For now, though, DISQUS is hurting blogs by hiding this priceless content from the engines

Despite these issues, the plug-in seems to be gaining plenty of converts.

We covered some alternative comment systems back in September: SezWho, BigSwerve, coComment, Co.mments and Intense Debate.

Blogging provides a platform for anyone to cast their views out into the world, whether to share with a few friends, be found by strangers via a search engine, or to build an audience.

Marc Andreessen started blogging last June and has written several posts that are a "must read" for tech entrepreneurs (among others). Today's post is useful for any investor who ventures beyond index funds to choosing specific stocks: In praise of dual-class stock structures for public companies.

A few highlights:

I used to be an absolutist against dual-class stock structures
...
After 15 years in the technology industry, though, I have done a complete 180-degree turn on the topic -- with some caveats.
...
the markets in which companies operate, and Wall Street in particular, throw up all kinds of short- and medium-term noise in the face of every public company, all the time.
...
The huge advantage of a dual-class stock structure is that it lets the company's core management simply ignore most of this stuff and stay focused on the long-term goal.

If you're not convinced, read the whole thing.

Andreessen applies his thoughts directly to current events.

How would you apply this to the drama unfolding around Microsoft and Yahoo?

Well, clearly, if Jerry Yang and David Filo had dual-class-powered voting control of Yahoo, the whole situation there would be playing out very differently.

Microsoft would have been forced to negotiate a purely friendly deal from the very start, and at a price that would have caught Jerry and David's attention from the start. Hostile threats would have been meaningless. ... And the company could have been entirely focused on current operations the whole time -- no distraction.