Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on October 4, 2008 – 3:50 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
“Blogging has become a major business” says Patrick de Laive in his post about the perfect Wordpress theme. He couldn’t be more right, read on for some proof.
Bankaholic, a banking and financial blog, was bought by Bankrate for $15 million. They paid $12.4 million up-front, with up to an additional $2.5 million earn-out payment available at the attainment of certain performance metrics in the next 12 months.
One man show
That’s a sweet payment for Johns Wu, the owner and single employee of the almost two-year old, Wordpress powered blog.
Bankaholic provides rate information on savings products, such as certificates of deposit, savings accounts, and money market accounts, as well as insurance quotes and a comparison of the best credit card offers, which are currently powered by Bankrate. In addition, Bankaholic offers consumers advice and information that allows consumers to comment and rate banks and their promotions through social networking features.
Bankrate and Bankaholic had a previous business relationship and it seems Bankrate was so pleased with the results that the company decided to acquire Bankaholic. “Bankaholic is ranked high in natural search for both deposit and credit card keywords. We believe their organic traffic will increase our deposit and credit card revenue, and with a high composition of free traffic, will help to improve margins.” stated Thomas R. Evans, President and CEO of Bankrate.
Everybody wants financial info now
In these harsh economic times, everyone is seeking financial and banking information. Bankaholic is well positioned on this market, so Bankrate might have made a great deal. Compete.com shows a traffic of about 300,000 unique visitors last month from the US (double that and you have an approximate number of visitors from the whole world)
The management and operations of Bankaholic will be taken over by Bankrate immediately and the founder, Johns Wu, will be working with Bankrate until the transition is complete (and maybe after).
Too expensive?
This acquisition will inspire a lot of bloggers (financial bloggers or not). Although some say the price paid was too high. I think Bankrate can improve the blog by bringing in a team of financial journalists. More quality will probably mean more revenue.
Noah Kagan, lives in the same Berkeley dorm as Johns, gives us the moral of this story in a post titled “Bankaholic sells to Bankrate for 15 million and no one noticed”.
Focus. Johns started out just doing Credit Card rates and became the #1 term for it on Google. Then he expanded to other banking categories.
Relevance. There are 1,000s of personal finance sites. Most of the people just consume some information. You go to his site to find deals and sign up for them. That’s the point.
Monetize. Johns picked a lucrative category where clicks will pay out $50+.
Well, Noah, The Next Web noticed this and congratulates Johns, even now it’s a bit late!
I hope you like that post!
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Written on October 3, 2008 – 3:50 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Amiz.fr, a French social network with over two million members has been acquired by French Steek SA. But the buying party isn’t all too interesting if you take the selling guys in account. Two Dutch fellas, Sebastiaan Moeys (19) and Tijmen Crone (20), founded the network in the summer of 2006 - right after highschool graduation.
The service offers its members various ways of communication and self-expression through messaging, blogging, pictures, videos and music - the usual social network stuff. But like more national networks - StudiVZ in Germany and Hyves in Holland - it grew rapidly to the before mentioned two million users.
Rumors about a possible exit buzzed around on TechCrunch France last Wednesday. In a press release, Moeys confirmed them today. He told me earlier that they had been facing scalability problems but that users kept coming back anyway. Moeys: “”The network wasn’t sold at its peak traffic. But given the large base of members, the service obviously didn’t go for free”. It didn’t make him a millionaire though. Exact financial details were not disclosed.
The release also mentions that Hyves and Netlog were also interested parties, they didn’t make the cut though.
Written on July 26, 2008 – 3:53 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
A dispiriting update about Google wanting to acquire Digg, the deal is off! The guys at Digg were about to close the deal and walk away with 200 million dollars. But for some reason, Google decided to walk away from the deal yesterday, leaving Digg to be the ugly bride nobody wants to have.
The acquisition had passed the term sheet stage and entered final negociations this week. During these non-binding negotiations, Google had closer research into Digg’s technology and financial statement, the teams from both parties might not cooperate as expected before.
Could Google have a strategy by walking away? Or is there something fishy to Digg’s financial status or technology? Perhaps it’s the fact that Google News already makes $100 million revenue per year, and does not need Digg. As Valleywag reports, Digg would be inconsequential for Google’s traffic. Either way, Interest of other parties might be questionable after the turndown by Google. I’d say: Just sell the site to the first buyer Jay, while you still can!
Written on July 23, 2008 – 11:12 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Google’s negotiations with Digg have become serious, and Techcrunch heard whispers at Google that the companies have signed a letter of intent and are expected to close the deal within a couple of weeks. With the acquirement, Digg will be brought under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range.
Democratic news website
Digg started as an experiment by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson in the last quarter of 2004, and raised it’s initial funding of 2.8 million in the second quarter of 2005. When Yahoo bought Del.icio.us in 2005, many people expected Google to buy Digg. In contrary, it was Yahoo that was rumored to buy Digg in 2006. In 2008, Yahoo releases a Digg clone (one of many, including Netscape), while Jay Edelson denied talking to them in March, it seems that Google is seriously interested in the democratic news site. Currently, the domain digg is estimated to attract at least 239 million visitors per year.
4 reasons why the acquirement is good news
- 1. Google didn’t kill Youtube or Feedburner etc. Some say that Feedburner development has stalled, think again. With the acquirement by Google, Feedburner introduced advertisements and many other new features in the last year. Would you like to see Digg get bought by FOX or AOL?
- 2. New features that would be impossible before Why? Digg has expanded their categories, and included video and pictures over the years, but face it; Digg is a place for tech geeks. Also, the fact that Digg will fall under the Google News property is good news, since they might be able to bring Digg to the next level.
- 3. Keeping Google freshThe guys at Digg can bring some fresh wind into corporate Google, keeping the company close to the ground.
- 4. Search engine will work better The digg search engine has been getting better over the last year, but still it’s slow and unintuitive. I usually use Google to find the right stories on Digg. With the Google acquirement, we will see improved search on the site.
Digg is dead, long live Digg
Call me a romantic dreamer but but Digg lost its ‘zapp’ a long time ago, and it’s never coming back. The democratic system of Digg made it an excellent resource back in 2006/2007. With the good content, Digg attracted more users. With the bigger user group outside the early adapters, interests change. Now, Digg is an excellent resource for funny pictures and clips, but the site has lost initial flavor, with the acquirement, intentions will go even broader. Will the suggested stories be the last implemented functionality?
Written on July 7, 2008 – 9:17 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
FlauntR, an online photo editor, and ColorPlaza, a pioneer in online photo finishing and portfolio company of New Value AG, have been acquired by FotoDesk. All three companies are based in Switzerland. With the Colorplaza deal, New Value did a share swap, and also invested CHF 1.0 million into the FotoDesk Group. New Value will own 45 % of FotoDesk Group.
FotoDesk is rolling out a unique online imaging service that combines photo editing, printing, sharing and storage in a single seamless service. FotoDesk provides services across Europe, through sites in 9 languages.
It will address the traditional online print market through its two consumer brands ColorMailer and FastLab, which it obtained in the ColorPlaza acquisition. FlauntR will also become a key part of its offering. The online photo editing service integrates nicely with photo sharing services like Picasa and Flickr, but also a slew of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces and blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal. Galleries with commenting systems and Slideshows with transition effects are supported for users to share and showcase content both onsite and offsite.
FlauntR CEO Bal Balaji will now head up FotoDesk as part of the agreement.
(Via alarm:clock euro)
Written on June 23, 2008 – 4:02 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
TechCrunch broke the news today: Nokia has acquired Berlin-based Plazes for an undisclosed amount. The service - founded by Felix Petersen - allows its users to track the places, activities and people in their lives. Sounds like Twitter and Jaiku right? But it isn’t completely the same, as the location is Plazes core feature. You don’t have to mention you’re in Berlin, it shows up in a Google map. Updates can be send by SMS or a mobile app (soon also on the iPhone).
Felix Petersen
There’s one other important difference though, while Twitter is U.S.-based and Finnish Jaiku was sucked up by Google, Plazes however, will remain European. Their first financial backing came from European private equity firm Doughty Hanson, which invested €2.7 million. The second round of funding DOES have an American touch to it, as Plazes received €1 million in total from Marc Andreessen (US), Esther Dyson (US), and Martin Varsavsky (Argentina). But that’s all there is. Plazes will stay in Berlin and remain member of the European tech family. And that is good for Europe. Just so you know, Loic Le Meur feels the same about it.
So what will happen next? Most likely, Plazes will become a standard Nokia app - installed on all its phones. Here’s what Felix himself (or his ghost blogger) writes:
The team is very excited to be able to further develop the Plazes service that is online today together with Nokia. If all goes well, in the near future plazes will be made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices.
I hope geo localization is ready for its big break-through.
Wanna know how the Plazes office and Felix’ home looks like? Check the MTV Cribs-like video we shot in January.
Written on June 23, 2008 – 3:14 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference
eBay has acquired Vuvox, a visual media company that lets you create and blend your personal media – video, photos and music into rich personal expressions, for an undisclosed amount of money. What struck me as odd is that eBay hasn’t announced the acquisition at all.
Our source at eBay confirms the acquisition, but apart from the size of the deal (”a small acquisition”), our source cannot give us any more insight. It seems to me that eBay is interested in the technology and maybe the team of Vuvox, but it is hard to guess its purpose within eBay.
On their about the team page, they’re pretty vague about who they are and use nicknames like ‘Da Man’, ‘Fast Talking Business Guy’ and ‘Man of Steel’ but after some googling you’ll find that William Woodward (co-founder of Macromedia, early investor and board member of Myspace) and Dane Howard (author of Future of Memories and designer) are part of the team.
Behind the click is an example of content build with Vuvox technology. (more…)
Written on June 11, 2008 – 3:25 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although the Germans have a patent on the copy-cat approach - Freundefeed, anyone? -, Spanish entrepreneurs recently proved to master this unique skill as well. And now there’s 24-year-old computing student Maciej Popowicz from Poland who also seems to get that the best business plan is to import a brilliant idea from abroad. He built Nasza-klasa, a Polish version of Britain’s Friends Reunited, France’s Copains d’avant, and Holland’s Schoolbank eighteen months ago. What came next, is well described by IOL Technology:
It has taken Poland’s Internet world by storm, and claims 11 million users, giving it widest coverage and penetration in this country of 38 million people, well ahead of YouTube’s 6,4 million Polish-based users.
To complete this entrepreneurial fairy-tale, TechCrunch reported earlier today that Estonia’s Forticom has acquired a majority stake in nasza-klasa for 200 million PLN, or 60 million Euros. From now on, Forticom will reach 7.5 million monthly users.
Although it isn’t the classiest way of making money, copying a successful service from abroad does make sense. People generally have the same needs - in this case: connecting with old classmates -, so why not offering them a localized version?
If you liked reading this post, you might want to subscribe to our RSS feed to read more European tech news. We cover Poland quite often. Did you know for example that Poland is Firefox heaven?
Written on June 7, 2008 – 2:48 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
AOL used to be world’s largest walled garden. Yet shortly after they were incorporated by Times Warner, the walls collapsed and the majority of garden visitors left. But during the past few years, the gardener has acquired quite a number of companies - like Bebo, Buy.at and Goowy media. All these web services have thing in common: they’re focused on advertising. Within a very short while, AOL has become an important advertising company. Now it’s time for the former Internet giant to bring structure into the company.
AOL Mountain View Office
The AOL executives started Platform-A for that task last September. This division houses ad sales for all its sites, ad network properties and supporting technologies. Platform-A has integrated sales for Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech. After cleaning up the house in the U.S., Platform-A now continues in Europe.
AOL will merge its existing European advertising subsidies - Advertising.com, Adtech, and buy.at - into Platform-A’s international operations. The European HQ is based in London and former Advertising.com international head Brendan Condon will be in charge. He can offer its American customers a more global appeal by placing their ads on European websites. With more social networks becoming global entities, advertisers will surely welcome this move by AOL.
Written on March 13, 2008 – 1:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
AOL is continuing its buying spree by acquiring Bebo. Reuters reports that Time Warner’s Internet division bought the social network for 850 million US dollars, in cash.
Bebo has 40 million users and may call itself no.1 in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. In the US is has a respectable third place behind MySpace and Facebook.
“Bebo’s dynamic management team recognizes that the Internet is less about destination and more about connecting people, culture and lifestyles,” AOL President Ron Grant said in a statement. I’ll translate it for you: Now we can target the adds of recently bought online affiliate marketing network Buy.at and the widgets of Goowy Media even better! Moreover, we’re catching up with Microsoft again!
One thing is for sure though, thanks to mother company Time Warner, AOL is making a remarkable comeback as an Internet giant.
[WebTipr: David Petherick, United Kingdom]
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
