Peter Kafka

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Former Maker Studios CEO Danny Zappin Buys a News Site That Covers Topics Like Danny Zappin

danny_zappinWhat do you do after you start a really big Web video company?

If you’re Danny Zappin, you buy a website that writes about Web video.

Zappin, the former CEO of YouTube network Maker Studios, has bought a controlling interest in NewMediaRockstars, a two-year-old site dedicated to news about YouTube and the rest of the Web video world.

Which is interesting! If not on an Omidyar-Greenwald level.

A couple things worth noting:

If you wanted to, you might take a “no conflict, no interest” perspective on Zappin’s purchase of a website that writes about Zappin. Zappin himself insists it won’t be odd. “It will cover whatever it would normally cover. I’m not going to use it for a personal agenda or anything like that,” he said.

First things first: NMR shut down about two months ago, after running out of money. So Zappin will need to reboot the site.

Alan Van, who had been editing the site, will come back to restart it, and Benny Luo, NMR’s original CEO, will come back to run the property day to day, Zappin said.

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google