BlackAmericaWeb.com, a news and community site closely tied to the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show, is engaged in merger discussions with the Interactive One family of websites, BlackWeb2.0 has learned.

Multiple sources have confirmed that talks are underway and the move could become official before year’s end.  Details of the pending deal have not been made public. BlackAmericaWeb could be folded into the Interactive One family or continue to operate as a stand-alone while taking advantage of any number of obvious synergies with Interactive One, including sales, marketing and promotion.

It would be a powerful new addition to the Interactive One family of websites, currently anchored by social networking powerhouse BlackPlanet.com, along with several other niche properties targeting African-Americans – TheUrbanDaily, HelloBeautiful, Elev8, GIANT and NewsOne.

BlackAmericaWeb would be an attractive addition for Interactive One because, generally, it attracts head-of-household site visitors who may not currently be visiting BlackPlanet and other Interactive One properties.  According to Compete.com, BlackPlanet attracted nearly 1.4 million unique visitors in June, compared to just over 225,000 for BlackAmericaWeb.

Competition for site visitors in the African-American space continues to be fierce, largely because of a growing number of web properties.

Entertainment and gossip blogs such as MediaTakeOut.com have proven that they can hold their own against better-financed properties like BlackPlanet and BlackVoices.com.  According to Compete, BlackVoices’ traffic has been plummeting, from a category-leading  2.9 million uniques in March to just under 1.1 million in June.  That placed BlackVoices behind BET.com, which had 1.7 million unique visits. MediaTakeOut had just under 807,000 uniques in June, according to Compete.

BlackAmericaWeb and Interactive One are already informal partners.

Radio One, the parent company of Interactive One, owns  51 percent of Reach Media, Inc, the parent company of the Tom Joyner Morning Show.

According to it’s website, Joyner’s radio program attracts more than 8 million listeners in 115 markets.