Penton’s Up For Sale; Hires Banker  says PaidContent.org

The B2B media firm Penton Media, taking advantage of the uptick in the B2B media M&A, has put itself up for sale. It has hired Credit Suisse Securities and Allen & Company to help in the process of exploring strategic options, including sale.
The official reasoning given on the move: said CEO David Nussbaum: “it is an opportune time to evaluate strategic alternatives was based on a number of factors, including that management has successfully improved operating income since the industry recession in early 2001 and the board’s belief that the market is currently very attractive for business-to-business media assets.” The company is among the oldest in existence: it was founded in 1892 by Canadian immigrant John Augustus Penton.

In case you missed it this week. DMGT continues its online buying spree paying $31 million for three classified sites, reports PaidContent.org

The three websites include car dealer site AutoExposure, and two recruitment web firms, Interbase and The Appointment.

Auto Exposure provides car dealers with services to publish and advertise their vehicle inventory online. Interbase Limited operates Productionbase.co.uk, a subscription based recruitment website for freelancers in the TV broadcasting and film production industries in the UK. The Appointment Limited runs the retail recruitment sites Inretail.co.uk and Retailcareers.co.uk as well as the retail magazine “The Appointment”. The three new acquisitions, which have a combined turnover of approximately $8.25 million.
In May, Associated spent $85.3 million in buying dating website Allegran, and Data Media Retail, which owns Carsource.co.uk. All of the acquisitions will form part of the AN Digital network of online assets.

From PaidContent.org:-

Times, the UK newspaper owned by Murdoch, has done an editorial overhaul of its online division, Times Online: In another change, Richard Caseby, the managing editor of the Sunday Times, will become assistant editor of Times Online. Anne Spackman, the managing editor of the Times, has been editor-in-chief of Times Online, as part of a move to further integrate the paper’s print and website operations. Peter Bale, previously editorial director for Times Online, will become editorial director of digital strategy, reporting to Spackman and leading the development of the website.

According to PaidContent.org blog search engine Technorati has raised $7.6 million in its third round of funding, according to an SEC filing, picked up by PE Week Wire.

Meanwhile, according to Om Malik, Feedster, the San Francisco blog search engine has raised a new round of funding, mostly internal and is about to announce a new president.

Sources say the amount of funding is in seven figures – between $1 and $5 million, says Om.

Lifehacker has a “how to” on finding good podcast content.

IT.com is a new specialist vertical search engine focussedo on the IT space.

This is an interesting mash-up which puts a new front end on Flickr. Worth a look.

PaidContent report that Google Video is rolling out country-specific sites in Europe. The idea is to make the content more appealing to local audiences by localisation – and this, despite the rather disappointing (by Google’s rather cosmic standards) take-up in the US.

Mashup has barely become a word and it has its own conference: Mashup Camp. Being held in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, this is actually the second annual event – plus there’s a blog, a wiki and a “mashup university”.

More web sleuthing has surfaced more evidence of the fabled Gdrive project by which Google was meant to get into the operating system game.