Beliefnet has been sold.
At one time Beliefnet aspired to be the premier spiritual portal on the web. And gave that aspiration a pretty good run. But it’s had hard times for a while now. In fact not all that long ago it was purchased by the media dark lord himself, Rupert Murdoch. And so having a new overlord is hardly surprising. ‘Tis the way of all flesh. And apparently websites…
Frankly, my only concern about this is that they own the wildly fun belief-o-matic test.
And here’s my concern. According to Jason Pitzl-Waters‘ research at his Wild Hunt blog, the new owners are BN Media, which has through its associates a long and cozy relationship with various conservative Christian organizations.
Right now its rather surprising how many people discover they’re Unitarian Universalists by doing the belief-o-matic test. So, beware if you take this test and all of a sudden you discover despite all your best efforts, you are in fact an Evangelical Christian…
More seriously Jason’s final thoughts on this turn of events says it best. “Aside from concerns over Beliefnet’s new owners scrubbing the site clean and “family friendly”, the big issue is if Beliefnet can ever get its mojo back in an increasingly crowded field. With Patheos, Religion Dispatches, the Huffington Post’s religion section, CNN‘s just-launched Belief Blog, and the Newsweek/Washington Post-supported On Faith all looking to draw folks interested in religious news and views, will Beliefnet end up like MySpace (another News Corp. acquisition)? Perennially behind the curve and slowly leaking readership/users? Whatever happens from now, I think it may be the beginning of the end of Beliefnet as we currently know it (and I feel fine).”
As the world turns…
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