Russell Beattie is getting together a Six Apart price pool.

I knew the The New York Times bought About.com, but for $820,000 per weblog? Wow.

More discussion on About.com and NYTimes at Jay Rosen’s PressThink, at John Battelle’s Searchblog, at Dan Gillmor’s Grassroots Journalism, and an interview with Martin Nisenholtz, SVP-Digital Operations, NYTimes, at PaidContent.

Speaking of weblog hosting companies, a relative surprised me with his Xanga blog. I took a look around – it seems a very simple and easy to use blog hosting community. Like LiveJournal, it allows you to post privately, to selected lists of people. Impressive.