Q&A platform Answers.com is announcing a ‘significant’ minority investment from private equity firm TA Associates. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
Answers operates a community-generated Q&A site at Answers.com, and was acquired by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of Summit Partners, for $127 million in cash last year. AFCV then delisted Answers, which was a public company, from the NASDAQ and took the company private. Shareholders were very unhappy with the terms of the deal, claiming it tremendously undervalued Answers.com, and tried to block the sale. Answers was also hit with a round of layoffs in June 2011.
On Answers.com, consumers can ask questions, provide answers to existing questions, and search for Q&A topics that fellow community members have created. Answers says the new investment will be used to ramp up personalization, social and other features on the Q&A community. The company says it has more than 150 million users who have generated more than 15 billion answers.
Answers Corporation (previously GuruNet) owns and operates Answers.com. Answers.com is an advertising-supported Q&A and reference site aiming to be the internet’s “one stop shop” for information. WikiAnswers, previously known as FAQ Farm, was acquired by Answers Corporation in November 2006. It’s similar in concept to Yahoo Answers in that it’s a user-generated Q&A community, but unlike Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers is in the form of a wiki. This allows users to change and hopefully improve old...
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