LA-based Internet forum community CrowdGather has acquired free forum hosting platform Forumer for $400K in cash. Forumer will be joining CrowdGather’s other platforms Lefora and FreeForums.org as a hosting option for its 65,000 plus online forums.
Forumer currently serves 35 million monthly pageviews for 200,000 forums. The purchase increases CrowdGather’s network traffic by 50% from 90 million monthly pageviews at the beginning of this year to 135 million monthly pageviews and 13 million monthly unique visitors (CrowdGather was at 100 million monthly pageviews before the acquisition).
CrowdGather (CRWG.OB) has been a publicly traded company since 2008 but just raised $7.85 million through private placement in March. Apparently it’s spending the money by going on a forum shopping spree, snapping up underpriced forums communities like rapmusic.com and digishoptalk.com and optimizing them for monetization.