Another Major Acquisition

March 6th, 2006 by Chris

I read this article this morning about NBC Universal buying iVillage. This is yet another in a recent string of major Internet acquisitions. I also like how the article recaps some of the other big ones lately.

What I find really neat about this is that the sale of course includes Gardenweb.com as it is part of iVillage now. For you non-gardeners, Gardenweb.com is one of the Internet’s largest forums, having been started in 1995. It has expanded from gardening information to home & life information. It is always popping up in garden related search results. In any case this site, which using a custom forum software that hasn’t change in forever, was started by a guy, just a guy, way back in 1995. He sold it to iVillage in 1994, I’m not sure for how much, and now it is sold to NBC Universal for over half a billion dollars. So 10 years after a guy starts a forum, a guy just like you or me, it is owned by NBC. Who will own your forum 10 years from now?

The MySpace story is interesting too, that site was only started in 2003 and boom, 2/3 years later it is sold for over half a billion.

The fact is, major media companies are waking up to the Internet. Look at NBC, how many failed online ventures did it have? Anyone remember NBCi? Now instead of going about things the wrong way and failing, they’re buying our successful creations.

Of course blogs have gotten big billing lately, what with the sale of Weblogs to AOL & About.com to the New York Times. However I think that forums are more valuable than blogs and they will be parts of major acquisitions in years to come. These major media companies are drooling over online communities, and a forum is the quintessential online community. This is also why the iVillage buyout interests me, because it is mostly a forum company, or rather the strong foundation of the company is its popular forums.

10 years from now will any of your sites be big enough to be bought out on this scale? Think about it.

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Posted in: General »  by: Chris

3 Responses to “Another Major Acquisition”

  1. Joe  Says:
    March 6th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

    Indeed. One would think forum acquisition would be a very good strategy for the long term. We will be seeing many more forums being bought and sold over the next few years.

  2. Mook  Says:
    March 6th, 2006 at 1:32 pm

    You know what’s interesting, where you said — “10 years from now will any of your sites be big enough to be bought out on this scale? Think about it.”

    My designer just asked me that yesterday, and my response was that, unless someone is willing to pay 10x what I’d make annually on it, I would not sell. Reason for this is that a site with that much profit and traffic potential can be used to launch so many more great sites that just need that extra oomph from a larger site. Also, consider the fact that ad rates are on the rise, and you’d probably make more in a 2-3 year period than a quick cash settlement buyout. But then again, if someone like Newscorp approached a site of mine that was earning what Myspace was ($20M annually) and offered a price of $568 Million for it, I would consider either offering them a crazy overpriced stake in the company/site or I would definitely just sell out for that price, because it’s truly an insane overpriced amount for any site.

  3. Amit Gupta  Says:
    March 18th, 2006 at 2:27 am

    In any case this site, which using a custom forum software that hasn’t change in forever, was started by a guy, just a guy, way back in 1995. He sold it to iVillage in 1994

    just to bring to your notice a typo, the Gardenweb forum was started in 1995, so it couldn’t have been sold in 1994, that must be 2004, no?

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