What Happened to Memeorandum's "Featured Posts"?

As readers know, I frequently rely on Memeorandum to help advertise this blog and get my essays out to allies and adversaries in the blogosphere. Especially cool are Memeorandum's "Featured Posts" links, which normally appear about halfway down at the right of the aggregator.

But "Featured Posts" has disappeared. A quick Google search turns up nothing on the change. I don't see anything about "Featured Posts" at Techmeme News, the blog of Techmeme. I also don't see any reports on changes to Memeorandum's formatting at TechCrunch or Wikipedia. There's also nothing yet at Real Clear Politic's "Best of the Blogs."

Given the financial losses through the news industry, with the potential collapse of the San Francisco Chronicle and today's announcement of the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, my best guess is that Memeorandum's going to a more lucrative revenue-generating model with its aggregator. Notice how the "Sponsor memeorandum" section has replaced "Featured Posts" on the sidebar. The going rate looks to be $6000 monthly, and while there's just one link up right now, Techmeme's got six advertisers listed.

In any case, I'll update when I find more information, but if the change is permanent, Memeorandum's impact on the blogosphere's going to be substantially less democratic, as the lowest of the 9th-tier bloggers will lose one of most inclusive opportunities for aggregation at a major portal for web publishing.