Yahoo to run Gawker blogs

Yahoo, one of the largest internet portals, on Wednesday announced an agreement to publish five weblogs from Gawker Media in a bid to attract younger readers to its site and to hold their attention for longer.

The deal offered another sign of the move by blogs into the media mainstream.

Last month, AOL, the internet division of Time Warner, raised eyebrows when it paid a reported $25m to acquire a collection of 90 blogs known as Weblog Inc. That followed News Corp?s acquisition of MySpace for $525m, a community website where blogs feature prominently.

And on Tuesday, Time Magazine, arguably the best-known US news weekly, announced an agreement to publish the blog of Andrew Sullivan, a conservative commentator, on its website.

The fascination with blogs comes at a time when internet advertising is booming as companies seek ever-more targeted ways to reach consumers. For larger media companies, blogs offer expanded advertising inventory and miniature platforms that attract niche groups of readers.

Bloggers have also made themselves more viable as commercial partners by linking into super-blogs, which aggregate multiple authors under one roof, thus attracting more readers and providing steadier output.

For Yahoo, the Gawker deal represented another step in its effort to add richer content. Scott Moore, head of news and finance at Yahoo, praised Gawker on Wednesday as offering ?some of the most well-known and interesting commentary today.?