According to the good people at some publication called the New York Times has announced that About.com and its subsidiary sites have been sold to InterActiveCorp (IAC). The latter adds to their portfolio of 50 internet brands spanning 40 countries generating over $1 billion in revenue annually.
About.com is a popular online resource site which provides a vast array of articles, how to guides and online courses that cover a broad range of topics. It made quite a bit of sense for the NYT to announce the sale given that they were the party that sold the collection of websites that includes About.com and affiliated sites CalorieCount.com and ConsumerSearch.com. The NYT purchased the company in 2005 for $410 million.
The $300 million acquisition is believed to be an all-cash deal that will close in the upcoming weeks. The cash is expected to help the Times quite substantially as the company’s market cap sits at $1.35 billion. The influx of cash should be put towards paying down debt that totals $775 million.
About.com was once an internet giant, generating large amounts of search engine traffic whole basking in the resultant advertising revenues. According to the good people at VentureBeat however, as Google tweaked and optimized their algorithms leading to losses and less than stellar results.
IAC will look to turnaround the once prominent collection of websites. They can only hope to leverage the potential of online resource sites as well as the vast amounts of information and guides the sites currently possess. It is far more likely that a company like IAC, who has one of the most robust internet portfolios around will be able to right the About.com ship than the NYT was able to.
SOURCE: VentureBeat
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