Conde Nast, publisher of 'Wired,' acquires Ars Technica

NEW YORK -- Conde Nast Publications said Monday it will acquire the technology news site Ars Technica for an undisclosed amount and combine it with the online operations of Wired magazine.

Ars Technica will continue to operate as an independent unit run by its editor-in-chief Ken Fisher. News of the deal had been reported earlier by TechCrunch, a technology news website.

Fisher founded Ars Technica in 1998 with Jon Stokes, and the site now has 4.4 million unique monthly visitors. Fisher will report to Sarah Chubb, the head of Conde Nast's digital unit, CondeNet.

Conde Nast also said Monday it was reviving two other websites that had been associated with Wired magazine, HotWired.com and Webmonkey.com, a site for amateur Web developers.

Webmonkey relaunched over the weekend, while plans are still in the works for a relaunch of HotWired for later in the year.

Conde Nast, a major magazine publisher that also owns Vanity Fair, Vogue and the New Yorker, acquired Wired magazine in 1998 but not the digital assets associated with it, which were bought by the Web portal company Lycos.

Conde Nast paid $25 million in 2006 to acquire the website Wired.com from Lycos, and last year quietly picked up the domains HotWired and Webmonkey as well.