Internet Brands Buys Automotive Forums

The Alarm Clock  believes they are the first to report that Internet Brands has acquired a number of large automotive forum sites, according to the owner of one of the sites. They do not know yet how much Internet Brands paid, however, the sites appear to be run by smaller companies. The list includes: + Corvetteforum + LS1Tech + PerformanceTrucks.net + ModMotorTech + Ford-trucks + Audiworld.com + Mustangforum.com + and ModernHemi.com. Corvette Forum claims over 110K registered members, FordTrucks claims 400K registered users and 1M+ uniques per month. The owner of one of the sites tells us he expects that others are in the works. He also argues that while discussion forums may seem like old tech he firmly believes that they are the most powerful of social networking sites. “The members of discussion forums do not usually drop one for another that may be a bit cooler or more trendy. They form relationships that keep them coming back. Competing forums are hard to start since nobody wants to post on a forum that is not active.”

Now that Internet Brands owns vBulletin and is building up a stable of forums it may become a force in social networking for a relatively low price.

MediaBistro.com sold for 23Million

Mediabistro.com, which began as a social network with bare bones technology and grew to a profitable, must-visit site for media professionals, is being acquired by Jupitermedia (Quote<!–, Chart–>), the parent company of this Web site, in a cash deal worth $23 million.

Laurel Touby started Mediabistro.com in 1999 as an online community for media professionals. The site’s cocktail mixers for media and creative pros became a popular forum for job-seekers and media professionals to network. It has since grown to include job postings, educational courses, events, forums, original content and a premium subscription service.

In a note on the Mediabistro.com site today, Touby wrote: “Today is probably the happiest day of my life. (Okay, second happiest. Getting married to Jon was pretty excellent.) When I put up my first web site in 1996 — or was it 1997? the records are gone — it was a humble little directory on someone else’s web site. Not even a site of its own. There was no hope of a business plan, much less a profitable business. The entire reason for its existence was to help media people, myself included, meet up, hook up and share resources with one another — a social network with bare bones technology.”

See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/business/media/18bistro.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

RecipeZaar.Com May Be Bought For $25M

Recipezaar, an online recipe site started in 1999 under the name Cookpoint.com, is in talks to be acquired for more than $25M by a large publishing company, reports the Seattle PI. RecipeZaar says its gets about 2.5M unique visitors. In addition to advertising, it also has a premium subscription plan. Last year, competitor (also in Seattle) AllRecipes.com was sold for $66M to Reader’s Digest.As with many Seattle startups, RecipeZaar was founded by a couple of Microsoft refugees who seem to have made the right decision to have left. RecipeZaar was founded by Troy Hakala and Gay Gilmore who never took funding so will pocket a substantial sum if the deal goes through.

Founders Hakala and Gilmore Bootstrapped RecipeZaar and Married Each Other Along The Way

See http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/118242.asp#comments

form thealarmclock.com