As far as I am aware I haven't made any other calls at all. This one wasn't exactly hard to predict given their treatment of scotch.io

Both were marketing/seo plays and long term there was never any incentive for them to keep the brands independent and operating at full cost.

TL;DR if you want your publication to live on well after you sell it, sell it to a publisher business, don't sell it to a product/service business.