Update: Clipmarks founder Eric Goldstein says that the acquisition news is "premature", but then goes on to say that Forbes "will be very helpful to us in fulfilling our potential" and the pair will announce a relationship in the coming weeks.
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Clipmarks, the service that lets you bookmark portions of web pages, is reportedly being acquired by Forbes Magazine. The price hasn't been disclosed, but I'd hope they didn't pay more than single-digit millions.
New York-based Clipmarks launched at the end of the social bookmarking boom (late 2005), and we were skeptical about its ability to gain any traction against established players like del.icio.us. The interface, heavy on javascript, has always seemed a little odd, although it did seem to gain a dedicated audience of less technical users. Whether it gained much traction beyond that is debatable, but it certainly had enough users and a low enough burn rate to sustain longer than a lot of its half-hearted competitors.
So Forbes is buying some technology plus a small to medium-sized community. They plan to provide the tools to reporters so that they can quickly aggregate info about a topic and add it to a blog post. I'm a little skeptical about the whole thing, but it's nonetheless a coup for the founders to find an exit.