Lifehacker, the online how-to guide for exercise, cooking, technology, parenting — and just about everything else — is being sold to the digital-media giant Ziff Davis, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.
The site is being sold by G/O Media, which owns Lifehacker and several other remnants of Gawker Media, including the tech site Gizmodo and the automotive site Jalopnik. Great Hill Partners, a private-equity company, purchased those sites from the Spanish-language media company Univision and renamed the collection G/O Media.
The price of Lifehacker could not be learned. The sale is expected to be announced later this week, the people said.
G/O Media and Ziff Davis had no immediate comment.
Ziff Davis approached G/O Media in recent months seeking to purchase the site to complement its existing portfolio of publications, which include Mashable, PC Magazine and IGN, according to one of the people. (Ziff Davis had been an interested bidder in the former Gawker sites when they were up for sale.)
In the highly competitive world of digital publishing, so-called service journalism publications like Lifehacker, which the entrepreneur and blogger Gina Trapani founded in 2005, are valuable properties because they attract readers who are interested in advertiser-friendly categories. Many readers who visit from search engines like Google are interested in buying a product that solves a problem, allowing sites like Lifehacker to earn a commission by referring visitors to a product sold at e-commerce destinations like Amazon.
Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, was particularly fond of Lifehacker. In a 2014 memo announcing a new leadership team for the company, Mr. Denton called the blog — a reliable driver of web traffic and ad revenue — “oh, beloved Lifehacker.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
