Looking for possible future acquisitions? Here’s a list of 5 companies that would be a great fit for a traditional media empire looking to grow its business by embracing a new media company that is on a growth path.

Here at 901am, we’ve take the time to evaluate these 5 companies and their possible homes if they were acquired. These are mere speculations, and opinions. Any conflicts of interest are merely by accident. We hold no vested interest in any of these companies.

1. Breaking News Online
Paid Content recently highlighted Breaking News Online. I personally agree with Rafat Ali’s notion about this small company. It would be a great pickup for any news organization. However if I was the CEO of NPR. I would dig deep and find the money to buy this startup. Likewise a mid size city would be wise to pick up this news startup.

2. Celebrity Gossip Rags
The Superficial, Jossip, PopCrunch all come to mind as great ideas on which to build on. Numerous small and large companies should be reaching for the phone to try and pick up one or all of these celebrity gossip sites. Some prime examples of where a gossip rag would be fit would be Huffington Post which could use one of these sites as a strong base to create an entertainment division. Another company that would be wise to pick up one of these up and coming celebrity sites is

3. AllTop Aggregator
The Alltop Aggregator is just awesome enough to warrant a takeover. It would make a nice solid starting point for any established news entity looking to embrace new media. Some likely landing points for this company would be a traditional news agency like a mid sized newspaper looking to gain new readers, and reach out to those used to consuming news through new media.

4. b5Media
B5Media, is an online media publishing company located in Toronto. A great landing spot for this company would be an advertising agency looking to increase profits by owning their own sites. The AOL ad networks come to mind who could use a few of these sites to bolster their own brands. B5Media has some strong brands including ProBlogger, & Digital Photography School two very strong brands that would be very valuable to a company who knows how to monetize this type of content well.

5. Bleacher Report
The Bleacher Report is a quiet yet AMAZING success seeing growth that is unheard of in such a short period of time. It’s ripe for a takeover. It’s partnered with CBS Interactive and I think that’s a likely landing spot for this company, unless Yahoo Sports picks it up which to me seems like a great fit even though Yahoo said it’s shedding companies that don’t fit it’s new strategy. The Bleacher Report fits its’ strategy well and I think would be in goods hands at Yahoo.

In an era where takeovers, and acquisitions are a daily occurrence in the media publishing industry this one comes as no surprise to me, however the buyer is a bit of a surprise to industry insiders.

Bloomberg LP, the global financial data and news empire created by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is the winning bidder for BusinessWeek.

Terms of the offer will not be disclosed by Bloomberg and BusinessWeek parent McGraw-Hill Cos. But knowledgeable sources say that Bloomberg’s cash offer is in the $2 million to $5 million range and that it has agreed to assume liabilities, including potential severance payments. It remains to be seen how much of the magazine’s 400-plus staff Bloomberg plans to cut, but reports of a planned scorched earth campaign are overblown, say sources.

Source: Business Week

One of the things working and publishing online has as far as benefits goes it the ability to work online and always be learning. I personally have a list of a few podcasts I regularly listen to, ebooks that inspire me, and blogs I read on a daily basis.

College Crunch has put together a list called 15 Podcats That Will Make You Smarter.

Personally I found some of these already on my listening list, and found a few new finds. As a media publisher I crave more content aimed at the online publisher, and webmaster crowd.

Do you have any suggestions for a resource aimed at improving the intelligence of the average webmaster of online publisher ?

The man who bought out I Can Haz Cheeseburger is slowly building one of the best content empires on the web.

“The privately held company was launched in 2007 when Mr. Huh acquired I Can Haz Cheezburger; since then he’s built it through acquisitions (Failblog in 2008) and launches (It Made My Day), into a network of 30 blogs visited by 11.5 million people a month. Failblog’s video site just passed CBS as the 7th most-viewed channel of all time on YouTube. It now has 21 full-time employees and five part-timers and is profitable, though Mr. Huh wouldn’t discuss specifics.”

I love hearing these kinds of success stories although having seen the industry from all sides I don’t envy anyone having to run this type of machine. It’s a hard life that requires a lot of work and lots of tough decisions especially in this digital economy. But Ben Huh has done a marvelous job building an impressive empire of hilarious sites.

Source: Ad Age

Gravity Forms is truly the most revolutionary plugin on WordPress IMO. It does multiple things that I wish WordPress Core had built in. Form Management to create a user generated content site, to customer relationship management, to a user generated job board. The possiblities are ENDLESS.

RocketGenius recently released their 1.2 Version of Gravity Forms

We are happy to release Gravity Forms v1.2! This is an exciting release that adds some new, exciting and very powerful features to the mix. Developers will love the data integration capabilities and novice users will love the new features that makes managing forms even more powerful.

I’m a big WordPress nut and this is truly one of the most exciting developments to hit WordPress imo since the creation of the Thesis Theme for WordPress. On the outside and inside this looks like a solid product that you could build some solid sites on.

Telegraph published a bogus report today about Twitter coming out with video. Mashable did the fact checking on it and found out that sure enough in line video is not even in the philosophical premise of Twitter.

“That said, Twitter does lose out when it comes to multimedia: adding in-line thumbnails for images and videos (even if that content is hosted on 3rd party sites) would make for a much richer experience that could match Facebook’s news feed for image and video sharing. Yes, in-line multimedia can be done with apps like TweetDeck, but that’s non-obvious and an extra step for those more familiar with the leading social network. Even this could bring Twitter into conflict with developers however: if multimedia support were added, would there be default services in the same way Bit.ly is the default URL shortener?”

While I think Twitter could be a bit cleaner, and integrate inline multimedia. If you haven’t taken a look at Yahoo Meme! you really should it’s very clean and smooth and just recently rolled out English language support.

This is what I wish a Twitter 2.0 would really look like.

Video Hosting and Publishing is still a large growth sector. Vimeo is one of the major players that I’ve liked for a long time. They are getting ready to roll out some major new tools that will really help make their platform attractive to new users, and existing publishers.

1 Desktop Uploader
I don’t understand why other video hosting platforms namely YouTube doesn’t have a desktop application to allow you to upload videos straight from an application that you can control.

2 Better Stats
Youtube doesn’t provide you with any stats other than what’s publicly available that’s one thing I’ve heard about Vimeo. Publishers like having control, and they like being able to view detailed statistics.

3 Larger Videos
People like BIG. Vimeo gets it on the Big Scale their videos are HUGE. 640×480 Gotta love that.

4 Featured Groups
Vimeo’s featured groups remind me of Flickr groups did before Yahoo bought them. Vimeo is smart, the groups brings community to the forefront and that’s where the important growth is.

The Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it is set to investigate whether Google has violated telecommunications laws via its Google Voice App refuses to connect to some rural connection points.

In a letter sent to Google on Friday afternoon, the FCC requested that Google explain how its application, Google Voice, works and why it is blocking some rural connection points.

Critics say if the agency determines that the service is a traditional telephone service than it will be regulated as one. If it’s not deemed to be a traditional telephony service than it’s unlikely the FCC will be able to do anything.

Google’s lead attorney on this issue is Rick Whitt, and argued that the service is not a traditional phone service because it is free and is an Internet application. He said some calls denied service to rural areas because of high costs of making those connections.

Source: Brainz

Jason Calacanis get’s it right when he says that Angels shouldn’t be asking Startups for cash for the time to pitch to them. First off Angels have the cash, and the time to listen to startups, and if they don’t have the time they shouldn’t ask startups to pay.

Jason Calacanis says it a lot better than I can, and in a rare moment I really agree with him on this.

I’ve been in the startup scene since 1994 and in those 15 years I’ve met, interviewed — and in some cases, pitched — the most powerful investors in technology. None of them have ever charged me a dime for doing so.
Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH!

It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time. Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered “nothing” or “the cost of two cups of coffee” you win the prize!

The leaders of the Associated Press and News Corp said Friday it is time for search engines and others who use news content for free to pay.

The leaders of these two companies have made an alliance as ad profits from online media have been eerily going down since the beginning of the financial recession about 2 years ago.

Many media companies argue that sites like Google have reaped a fortune from their online content without just compensation from the corporations producing the content.

To me it’s hilarious you would take a potshot at Google when they send you thousands of visitors a minute to your subsidiaries. But hey what do I know. I would never slap the hand that feeds me if I was a multibillion dollar corporation like News Corp, or the Associated Press.

This just seems like posturing or a twisted negotiating tactic.

Weekend Update:
Newsweek has an interesting solution to Fox and the AP’s problem.