The company was founded in September 2003 by
Jason Calacanis and
Brian Alvey, in the wake of Calacanis's
Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, with backing from investor
Mark Cuban. By early 2004, Weblogs, Inc. and
Gawker Media were establishing the two most notable templates for networked blog empires. Initially, Weblogs, Inc. consisted of a few dozen blogs, all residing as subdomains of weblogsinc.com. The exception was
Engadget, a stand-alone site covering new technology in blog format. Engadget was co-founded by Peter Rojas, the former editor of Gizmodo in the Gawker Media network. Eventually a plethora of independent brands were established, including 26 stand-alone sites and over 50 sub-blogs. A few of the company principals also maintained personal blogs on the network, including Mark Cuban. Weblogs Inc was sold to AOL for a reported $25 million in October 2005. The move came as AOL was preparing to become an independent division within
Time Warner. Weblogs Inc continued to operate independently from AOL's other content websites for many years, until AOL began phasing out the Weblogs Inc branding in favor of its own, consolidating to a few of the strongest titles, and integrating more closely with its namesake media division, which included AOL News, AOL Autos, AOL Tech, etc. The emphasis on AOL branding was increased following the spin-off of AOL from Time Warner in 2009. Up until mid-2010, Weblogs, Inc. branding remained subtly alongside AOL's, on titles like Engadget and Autoblog, but in late 2010, the name was dropped and the official website was redirected to AOL.com, approximately coinciding with a major redesign of AOL branded properties. Around the same time, AOL also acquired tech industry blog
TechCrunch, at a time when it had less than a dozen remaining blog brands. Following AOL's $315 million acquisition of
The Huffington Post in February 2011, the former Weblogs Inc blogs, along with TechCrunch and many of AOL's other content brands, were reorganized under a new division called the "Huffington Post Media Group." Under the arrangement, the Huffington Post editorial team took responsibility for editorial oversight of AOL's other blogs and news sites. Months after the acquisition, AOL further consolidated its total count of content websites to just 20 brands, of which Engadget, Autoblog, Joystiq, and TUAW were the only remaining former Weblogs, Inc. titles. The Huffington Post Media Group branding was never used in any significant public-facing capacity, but the Huffington editorial team was put firmly in control of AOL's news websites. This led to numerous controversies over editorial direction, including the departure of TechCrunch editor and founder
Michael Arrington. Joystiq and TUAW were shut down and folded into Engadget in February 2015. Around the same time, AOL Autos and AOL Tech were shut down and redirected to Autoblog and Engadget, respectively. In 2015, AOL was acquired by
Verizon. In 2017, AOL's content business, along with that of
Yahoo!, which was also acquired by Verizon, were combined into a new online media subsidiary. Then Verizon sold that to private equity firm
Apollo Global Management. Currently, Engadget and Autoblog are the only remaining former Weblogs Inc. titles. ==Blogs==