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News & Updates - Monday, January 31, 2005

Gawker Gets Into BlackInc.

Nick Denton at Gawker Media just announced his latest move to elevate blogs to the next level - and this time he's getting help from Matt Comyns and Brad Bowers of BlackInc Ventures, an interactive sales and business development agency (we first mentioned these guys last summer).

According to an announcement of the deal: Sony Electronics is today including weblogs for the first time in an online advertising campaign. Sony is the largest consumer electronics company to date to make a direct buy on weblog titles. The company will be the launch sponsor of Lifehacker, a new title from Gawker Media covering client software and useful web sites. The buy also includes Gizmodo, Gawker Media's gadget title.

We like to see our friends come together and forge solid ventures. A master at milking the press, Denton's entrepreneurial exploits with Gawker Media have been well-documented. We still believe he has the one thing no other blogger has: a hint of a business model.

However, we also want to highlight the lesser known entity in this announcement, BlackInc Ventures, a team of seasoned Internet execs that offers expertise, industry knowledge, and most important, FAT rolodexes to its clients. In an era of stripped-down online operations, the BlackInc service model makes perfect sense. Our guess is that these guys work for a shifting mix of equity, cash, and commissions depending on the client. In the Gawker deal, for instance, we suspect Denton was able to line up the Sony relationship with limited out of pocket costs.

To see list of BlackInc clients, go here.

Here are some BlackInc clients the a:c has profiled:
BitPass
Corante
Exevo
Gawker Media
JiWire
Technorati