OPW — Apr 10 — Spark Networks has acquired Engage.com. The deal had been in process for several months. No details have been released as yet. Engage is headed by Suneet Wadhwa (formerly the co-founder of Snapfish.com, Harvard MBA) and Trish McDermott (formerly VP Romance at Match.com). The site allows users to become virtual matchmakers and match members. It's great theory, but the site has never really taken off. Traffic tanked from 300k monthly uniques in May '08 when they ran out of money and switched off the ad buys. See Compete graph. Now they are at 50k uniques a month, which isn't many more uniques than this blog gets. Where will Spark take Engage? Its a decent domain, but the site needs an overhaul. The concept was good, but the viral effect that they were hoping for didn't kick in with their implementations. Do people really want to be matchmakers? Yes, but very very few people, and they tire quickly, especially if they are not rewarded consistently. I'm fascinated by Engage. I hope Spark gets a new launch right, and it doesn't end up locked in a boardroom quagmire. The site has potential. – Mark Brooks
Category: All Acquisitions
Meetic And Match.com Announce European Partnership
PR NEWSWIRE — Feb 19 – IAC and Meetic have entered into an agreement for Meetic to acquire Match.com's European operations from IAC. IAC will sell 100% of the stock of the entity that houses Match.com's European operations for an approximate 27% stake in Meetic, plus a 5m euro note. FULL ARTICLE @ IAC MEDIA ROOM
Sun Sets On PlanetOut
SF BUSINESS TIMES — Jan 9 — Gay and lesbian media company PlanetOut Inc will merge with Here Networks and Regent Entertainment Media, two related businesses that have bought parts of PlanetOut in the past few years. Here Media and Regent will pay $4.7m in cash into the new company as part of the deal. They'll own, through special preferred shares, 80% of the business after the merger.
The full article was originally published at SF Business Times, but is no longer available.
Tsavo Acquires Better
PRESS RELEASE — Sep 16 — Tsavo Media has opened a
headquarters office in Santa Monica and has acquired
Better, a services provider in the search
engine marketing sector. Founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Ben Padnos,
the company provides a variety of services ranging from SEO and PPC
management to such clients as Paramount, DreamWorks and Closet World. Tsavo Media’s
technology will focus on content, with the
goal of improving how consumers experience media. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE
Mark
Brooks: I interviewed the CEO of Tsavo recently. See the Mike Jones
interview here.
Mail.ru Buys Into Mamba.ru
RBC — Aug 29 — Mail.ru, the Russian email service provider
and Internet portal, has acquired a 30% stake in the
Russian dating site Mamba.ru from the Finam Investment Company. Market participants estimate the value
of the deal at $15m. According to experts' opinion, however, Mamba.ru
is running the risk of losing its other major partner Rambler, which
provides the dating service with 25 to 30% of its users. The
client base of Mamba.ru currently amounts to 9.8m people, according to
the company's site, and its revenue topped RUB 300m (approx. USD
12.22m). FULL ARTICLE @ RBC
On Plutolife’s Acquisition
VENTURE BEAT — July 31 — Jumbuck, a mobile social network, bought rival Plutolife at the beginning of this month for $3.7m. I was interested to hear why. Here's Jumbuck's CEO Adrian Risch on the Plutolife acquisition.
Q: Jumbuck's business has been on-deck. Please explain what Jumbuck hopes to learn with the acquisition.
A: Plutolife generally uses Premium SMS to monetize their services and they are experts in off-deck mobile communities. We were keen to boost our exposure to the 'off-deck' market and Plutolife was a perfect fit.
Q: What's your business model?
A: Our business model revolves around the provision of chatrooms and real-time dating service over mobile and web.
Q: How will you be able to make money out of off-deck mobile social networks?
A: Plutolife already are making money using Premium SMS.
Q: Where do you see the value in an off-deck mobile social network?
A: We are still believers that you need to partner with the mobile operators in order to actually make money on-deck or off-deck. Plutolife really excel because they use a 'freemium' model. The apps are free to use but monetize with Premium SMS features.
Q: What did you like about Plutolife?
A: We really liked the look and feel of their services, plus the apps were already attracting strong usage on a few US mobile operators such as Alltel and T-mobile.
Q: How do you see the take-off of the mobile web?
A: The mobile web has been growing for years but Apple fired a rocket under it with the iPhone launch. I look forward to vastly quicker mobile web browsing across all devices, so we can offer video, larger images, nicer GUIs and more effective advertising in our products without degrading the user's browsing experience.
Q: What's your view on the emergence of Myspace and Facebook in mobile?
A: Myspace and Facebook are more 'friend-management' social networks. Jumbuck is a 'friend-finder' social network, where you can meet new friends for a casual chit-chat, flirt or date. So we have co-existed nicely for years. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT
Mark Brooks: Plutolife built the Lavalife and Date.com dating applications.
EasyDate Acquired SpeedDater
EASY DATE — Mar 12 — Edinburgh based EasyDate Ltd. and speed dating company, SpeedDater have merged. The acquisition of Speed Dater by EasyDate was the result of a lengthy one year courtship and was completed on 7th March 2008. The Speed Dating Events and Online business is now under the full ownership of EasyDate and the ex-directors of SpeedDater are now concentrating on their travel business Speed Breaks.
Compete Acquired By TNS For $75 Million
MASHABLE — Mar 3 — Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS) acquired web
analytics company Compete, Inc. for $75 million in cash plus deferred
cash payments in 2008-2010 of up to another $75 million. The
acquisition comes at a time when Compete announced revenue of $14.9
million for 2007 and a loss of $4.5 million for the same year, due to
investing in "building its panel and industry expertise." Along with
Alexa and Quantcast, Compete has been the only relevant, free, publicly
available metric of website traffic. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
Mark Brooks: I use Compete all the time and I hear the information is pretty good.
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
HotOrNot Acquired For $20 Million
TECH CRUNCH — Feb 11 — San Francisco based HotOrNot, founded by James Hong and Jim Young in October 2000, has been acquired. The buyers are investors connected with Avid Life Media, and paid somewhere around $20 million for the site. Their annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit. According to Comscore, the site has around 5 million monthly unique visitors and 200 million page views. The investors are creating a new company, called HotOrNot Media, and they may be acquiring more properties as well. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Cupid.com And RegionalHelpWanted Acquired For $100 Million
MASHABLE — Feb 11 — RegionalHelpWanted.com was purchased by onTargetjobs, a portfolio company of Warburg pincus. The financial terms weren't explicitly disclosed, but according to PE Hub, Classified Intelligence "pegs the figure at $100 million". RegionalHelpWanted is also the company behind the telephone and online dating service Cupid.com, another recognizable brand name. The RegionalHelpWanted portfolio will join the onTarget portfolio that includes other sites like BioSpace.com, Hcareers.com, HEALTHeCAREERS.com, MedHunters.com, JobLoft.com and CareerBank.com. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
Mark Brooks: Cupid and RHW are promoted on remnant radio advertising usually at second tier radio stations around the country. What's unusual is that the payouts are on a CPA basis to radio stations. onTargetjobs has picked up a unique marketing channel.