Acquisitions A Go-Go

Last week was a big week for the acquisition of web content and technology companies:

– Yahoo acquired events website Upcoming.org, which is a great resource for both event planners and attendees. For an example, this is the Upcoming.org listing for the Laughing Squid 10th Anniversary Party. Here are the announcements from Upcoming.org and founder Andy Baio.

– Windows-based NewsGator purchased Ranchero Software’s excellent Mac-based NetNewsWire (it’s the newsreader that I use to read all the feeds I’m subscribed to).

– AOL purchased blog empire Weblogs Inc., which is made up of over 80 blogs, including popular blogs like Engadget, Hack A Day, Autoblog and Mark Cuban’s Blog Maverick.

– VeriSign acquired blog ping notification service Weblogs.com. Here’s founder Dave Winer’s initial comments on the deal.

In addition to all of last week’s acquisitions, Netscape co-founder Marc Andressen’s latest top secret project, 24 Hour Laundry, officially launched as a social applications remix service Ning. Here’s Om Malik’s coverage of the Ning launch.