A trusted source has confirmed that French-blogging platform, Overblog, will soon be part of the Wikio family. Rumor has it that the growing Luxembourg-based news portal is apparently trying to develop European Google News for blogs.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with Wikio, all you really have to know is that it’s a news portal founded by Pierre Chappaz in 2005 after his previous company, Kelkoo, was acquired by Yahoo in 2004 for some 475 million euros. For acquisitions à la Française, that’s not too shabby.
So far, no details concerning the financial transaction have been released but we’re told that it should be up there with the likes of Exalead and Priceminister – two French companies that were acquired during the summer for roughly €135 million and €200 million respectively. As far as Wikio is concerned, the group has also been on a bit of an acquisition spree lately, buying e-reputation solution Neotia in April as well as marketing group eBuzzing in December of last year.
The new Wikio family should count some 120 employees across several European countries, including offices in Paris, London, Rome and Milan. Pierre Chappaz will direct the new team that will be reinforced by the new addition of Frédéric Montagnon, Overblog’s founder. Montagnon is also one of the co-founders of Nomao, a local competitor of TellMeWhere – who plays alongside the likes of Yelp and Qype.
Wikio is a European Social Media and Marketing Group with Offices in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It operates Overblog, the leading blogging platform in Europe, Wikio sites, which are promoting the most recommended articles from social media, Nomao, a local search and recommendation engine, and Experts, an online how-to guide. Wikio also offers marketing services to Brands, through its Ebuzzing platform which connects advertisers with social media power users.
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