View Full Version : Should Jeeves try to buy About.com?
MUSCLE13
02-12-2005, 02:27 PM
NY Times this week said About is for sale with 5 bidders. I took a look at the Comscore rankings for December
In millions of unique users
#4. Google Sites 71,660
#7 Ask Jeeves 41,411
#8 About/Primedia 38,374
Now wouldn't it be something if Jeeves and About.com combined and had more users than Google? LOL! That would be something else. I hope Jeeves makes a strong bid.
Peter
02-12-2005, 06:02 PM
Search and content are clearly converging, so it wouldn't be surprising to see AJ -- or Google, for that matter -- be the company to acquire About.com.
That said, you've overlooked the issue of duplication when considering the number of unique users a combined AJ/About entity would have. There are undoubtedly a high percentage of users who visit both sites on a monthly basis, so they're actually being double-counted when you add the Comscore figures together.
Google would still have many more users.
MUSCLE13
02-12-2005, 08:18 PM
There are undoubtedly a high percentage of users who visit both sites on a monthly basis, so they're actually being double-counted when you add the Comscore figures together.
Valid point but I doubt its a very high percentage. 10 or 20% would be my guess. Also found out that about 2/3 of the Primedia unique users are for About.com so we are talking about 25 million monthly users for About.
MUSCLE13
02-17-2005, 10:20 PM
Reuters says NY Times got About.com. Bet the guys at About are not too happy about that. My thinking is About's profit margins probably were not up to par with the search companies' margins since About is really a content company. None of the search companies got em, Ny Times did. Weird.
Nacho
02-18-2005, 01:55 AM
Here is the article:
New York Times to buy About.com (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BA4831A59%2D722D%2D401A%2DBA61%2D 6E7874F939E6%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=)
By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:00 PM ET Feb. 17, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- New York Times Co. said Thursday it has agreed to acquire About Inc., an online information portal, from Primedia Inc. for $410 million in cash, in the latest move by an old-line media company snatching up a high-growth prospect.
Hmmm.. Sounds like Primemedia could have made a nice profit from all those years of cashflow, plus nice balloon at the end. We'll see when we read the fillings for the Times.