TagWorld Rumors: Viacom Investment and Partnership

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J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... → Learn More

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

TagWorld, the social networking site that launched in late 2005, has been the subject of a lot of speculation lately. Valleywag speculated that the company was in trouble and pointed out that the management page (cache here) had been removed. Others have noted that TagWorld’s Comscore numbers have dropped significantly from earlier in 2006. At the very least, the company has made little headway against MySpace and the others.

But there are other rumors as well. Viacom and NBC are still figuring out their social networking strategies (NBC is doing so publicly), and insiders are saying that Viacom will likely announce an investment and/or partnership deal with TagWorld in the near future. It’s likely that TagWorld’s engine will be the back end to the much anticipated MTV social network. TagWorld won’t comment on the story, other than to say that they remain healthy and will be launching a new version soon.

TagWorld previously raised $7.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, in March 2006.

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