Vertical Scope, the Canadian-owned giant that touts a whopping 30 million unique monthly visitors amid its 300-plus web properties, according to its Google Analytics report March 2011, announced yesterday via Twitter that rumors of its acquisition of what is purportedly the largest off-road website upon the web, Pirate4X4.com, were in fact true, adding to its massive portfolio of automotive, powersports, power equipment, sports, action sports and technology websites.

It was inevitable. I called it out the day I left. I understood full well, as managing editor (or "Managing Partner" =), who was taking reigns and how little they understood the dynamics of the industry and the core lifestyle of its community. It may have taken two years longer than I and many others had anticipated but it's official. Advastar Communications gave up Off-Road.com, selling it to (perhaps) a more formidably savvy web publisher, which appears geared to make gains on its investment straight way after squeezing the trigger. Off-Road.com, the once off-road industry mega site that was rumored to shut down its doors and even its web servers, sold to VerticalScope.

Do I stream? Do Ustream? Well, if you're considering launching a web cast that seeks to stream a live audio or live video show, then Ustream is an excellent platform to place your web streaming efforts into. I love the social media channel for its compartmentalized embed options, which can be easily tailored to your website's design layout. If you're not familiar with Ustream, a decent place to begin delving into how the platform works is found within the embedded video upon this page.

Today’s navigation throughout the web fringe takes me back to web advertising as well as overall off-road industry marketing. But let's at least stick to the web perspective for the time being. Now, from the publisher’s perspective, I have great disdain for a reliance upon ad networks, especially when it comes to fashioning a business model based solely upon advertising for its revenue stream. I have fought this venture with entrepreneurs greater than I but fought it nevertheless, basing my reasoning upon tangible principalities and subsequent results. Inevitably, the few whom I am speaking of have lost on such entrepreneurial web efforts time and again. Now let's get it straight. I have yet to make my own fortune but have managed to make a decent living making others their fortunes.

I am hereby breaking into the business of making news of someone else's hard work. I toss a quick quip and a sensational array of edgy words. It's artistry and engaging. I don't dictate onto the masses. I embrace them. I call it news aggregation. It's nothing more than a modified blog of slightly more important subject matter. Yet it's news. I am a news aggregator. It's word of mouth marketing. I merely regurgitate what I refer to as news and do unto it like a cow chews cud. The normal method of consumption is chew, swallow, stomach and dump. So goes the old ways of the news world. The newspaper is virtually dead. Now, we mouth off a bit, chew it, swallow it, and combine the final two stages into one, regurgitating facts and opinion amid social media outlets and thereby commence into the abyss of new age reporting until the fad fades into emptiness.

I remember the days. I worked straight HTML. I wrote like a mad man. Lived the ultimate off-road lifestyle and documented the insanity by means of a camera, a keyboard and often times a satellite internet connection. Those were the days of Off-Road.com. There were editorial days that existed long before the ORC era of my life, but they do not size up to the workload, responsibility nor adventure. Traffic at ORC was ultimately bolstered by informative and often humor-laced excitement. And during that era of my life, it was far more difficult to web publish that excitement as it is today. Straight HTML via notepad and then manually publishing links via FTP file upload for an array of primary directory pages was an extremely tedious task. Homesite soon eased the HTML editing woes but also inserted erroneous code. Fortunately, Macromedia Dreamweaver segued onto the scene has long proven to be a standard asset in my code-slinging repertoire.