Tallygram, a Facebook-based friend finding app created by dating site OKCupid, has shut down, saying that the community never grew large enough to sustain the site. Tallygram, which originally billed itself as “a better way to surf Facebook,” first opened for business in November 2012. → Read More
Media and Internet company IAC has pocketed (yet) another web property — picking up veteran online tutoring website Tutor.com for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition completed today, meaning Tutor.com is now an IAC operating business. George Cigale, founder and CEO of Tutor.com, will remain as CEO and continue to run the business from Tutor.com’s offices in New York City. → Read More
Regardless of what you think about digital dating sites, they encourage us to close our computers and get out there and meet new people. In short, they bring people together. The problem is, of course, that there are infinite variations on social and mobile dating, from compatibility engines and social, Facebook-based platforms to game-ified bracelets and live video dating. Then there are the… → Read More
Online media and advertising company CityGrid, the parent company of properties like UrbanSpoon, CitySearch and Insider Pages, is announcing a round of layoffs today that will affect about 15% of its workforce. → Read More
Update: The news has now been confirmed. The $300 million acquisition price includes About.com, ConsumerSearch.com and CalorieCount.com and the deal will close in the next several weeks. Full release below.
Both AllThingsD and Reuters have reported a deal in the works, and we have now confirmed with a source very close to the situation that IAC is buying About.com from the New York Times… → Read More
IAC’s Citygrid Media has bought Felix, a pay-per-call ad business from Yext, a service that helps businesses synchronize their listings across the Web. We hear the acquisition price was around $30 million.
Yext originally launched at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2009 as a pay-per-call advertising service. Earlier this year, Yext shifted its focus from this service to a new product called… → Read More
IAC-owned Match.com this morning announced that it has acquired a 20% interest in Zhenai, a provider of “online matchmaking services” in China, for an undisclosed sum.
Launched in 2005 by CEO Dr. Song Li, Zhenai provides integrated Internet and telephone matchmaking services to Chinese singles looking for long-term relationships. Zhenai is said to boast a user base of over 30 million… → Read More
Online dating site OkCupid is making a big move today in the mobile space—the service is adding location-based functionality to its Android and iOS mobile apps. For background, OkCupid singles tend to be younger, which is one of the reasons why IAC’s Match.com decided to buy the dating startup for $50 million earlier this year.
The use of mobile apps for dating and even meeting friends is … → Read More
IAC has had an agreement with Google for some time now to hand over all search advertising on Ask.com and other IAC sites to the search giant. In 2007, IAC extended the deal, which was worth $3.5 billion at the time, to end in 2012. According to a release issued this morning, IAC and Google has renewed and extended the agreement through March 31, 2016.
According to the release, the agreement… → Read More
IAC has made a business out of developing or acquiring mobile applications based on its popular properties. In fact, IAC’s mobile apps, which include apps for Match.com, CityGrid, UrbanSpoon, and Dictionary.com, have seen over 40 million downloads as of end of the year 2010. Today, we’ve learned exclusively that IAC is furthering its mobile strategy by launching Hatch Labs, a technology sandbox… → Read More
IAC has expanded its board of directors with a thirteenth seat and elected well-known businessman Michael Eisner, who served as chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005, to join said board, effective immediately.
Prior to his long tenure at Disney, Michael Eisner served as the President of Paramount for eight years after starting his career at ABC. In fact, he was hired at… → Read More
Big move for Liberty Media, IAC and the latter’s Barry Diller today. The former has exchanged its entire equity stake in the Internet holding company for a combination of assets and cash in a transaction intended to be tax-free to both companies. Liberty has exchanged approximately 12.8 million shares of IAC stock for all of the capital stock of a wholly-owned subsidiary of IAC that holds the … → Read More
After a series of on-again, off-again talks, Newsweek is merging with The Daily Beast, the IAC-owned online news site run by Tina Brown. The new joint venture will take the ungainly name of the Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Last August, the Washington Post Company sold Newsweek for $1, plus the assumption of $40 million in debt, to stereo tycoon Sydney Harman.
Now Barry Diller is getting his… → Read More
The saga continues. After informing us in September that the IAC-owned Bloglines was to be shut down permanently, Ask.com (the IAC property that operates Bloglines) has resurrected the troubled RSS feeder, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. IAC has transferred ownership of the property to an unlikely new patron: MerchantCircle, an online marketing network for small business owners. → Read More
Barry Diller realizes that his Ask search engine isn’t going to gain market share anytime soon, but search can still power growth for IAC if it just keeps up with the growth in the overall search market. IAC released third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were up 25 percent to $422 million. Operating income quadrupled to $36 million, and adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.32… → Read More
Online analytics company Compete has just published its ranking of the top 50 websites for September 2010, giving some insights into current visitor trends (and not absolute numbers, as the company tends to undercount traffic for most websites).
Compete’s data compilation shows increasing traffic to Microsoft’s search engine Bing (up 11.7 percent for the month and 108.5 percent for the year) as… → Read More
On stage today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, recalled a story from the days when he backed Excite, one of the original Internet portals. Specifically, he spoke briefly about the time they failed to acquire Google.
This story has been circulated for a while, but not many people know about it. Khosla stated it simply: Google was… → Read More
Many of us may have forgotten that Ask.com is a search engine just like Google and Bing. It seems that IAC’s Barry Diller, who owns Ask.com, seems to have no memory of Ask’s value as well. Diller sat down with Michael Arrington today at TechCrunch Disrupt, and spoke candidly about the future of Ask.com.
Says Diller, “I don’t think Ask.com is going to gain search share; everyone copied us.” He… → Read More
It’s finally happened. Bloglines,the troubled RSS feed reader owned by IAC, will officially be shut down, the company has told TechCrunch exclusively. The site has had a tumultuous history, so it’s unsurprising that IAC has finally put the platform out of its misery. Bloglines, which is actually operated by IAC Q&A property Ask.com, will be informing users of the news today and will… → Read More
Recently soft-launched by CollegeHumor Media (aka Connected Ventures), the IAC company is today formally introducing the latest addition to its ever-expanding network of funny websites.
Meet Dorkly.com, a new videogame humor property that caters to “all gamers, be they nerds, geeks, or even dweebs”. That sounds like you, so we thought we’d share. → Read More
Dailyburn, formerly known as Gyminee, a social network for fitness and diet tracking, online accountability, and motivation, has been sold. IAC has acquired a majority stake in the company for an undisclosed sum.
DailyBurn will become part of IAC’s Mindspark Interactive Network, which is also is home to social and entertainment destinations like Zwinky, IWON and Girlsense, personal interest sites… → Read More
Before there was even an App Store, I knew there was something to UrbanSpoon. Several million downloads and a sale to IAC later, I can safely say I was right. Now the team behind it is trying to capture the magic all over again with its new free iPad app.
On the face of it, UrbanSpoon for the iPad may not seem as useful as it is for the iPhone. After all, most people don’t just whip out their… → Read More
There’s no denying it. People love to shake their iPhones. It’s almost as if they want to see how much they can shake it before it breaks. But shaking it is half the fun, especially when apps take advantage of the built-in accelerometer to turn shaking into a feature. One of the earliest apps to make shaking a central element of its interface was Urbanspoon, the restaurant recommender. You… → Read More
As you know, today is Valentine’s Day. As such, I thought it was the perfect time to write a love sonnet for my new favorite company: Expedia.com. Actually, I’ll do the opposite.
Seeing as it’s a long weekend in the United States (President’s Day is on Monday), I decided I was going to set up a little trip to get away with the girl I’m seeing. A few weeks ago, I set up all the plans for what I… → Read More
In major metropolitan areas, the BlackBerry at lunchtime is a force to be reckoned with. And now it can be a device to help those urbanities actually find a place to eat with the launch of Urbanspoon for BlackBerry.
Urbanspoon has been one of the most popular apps for the iPhone since it launched alongside the App Store in the summer of 2008. By blending location data with a fun… → Read More
Online dating service and IAC property Match.com is getting into the highly-targeted subscription dating game with the acquisition of People Media, which it is taking off the hands of publicly traded PE firm American Capital and a host of other investors for $80 million in cash.
The deal includes the purchase of about 27 targeted dating sites with a combined 255,000 paying subscribers, including… → Read More
UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnel who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. IAC, the Internet giant, has just bought the completely… → Read More
Meetic, the popular European online dating company, announced today that it has agreed to buy the European operations of the IAC-owned Match.com. The news was announced on the blog of Loïc Le Meur, who is a board member of Meetic but will need to resign to leave room for an IAC representative.
IAC will sell 100% of the stock of Match Europe – the entity that houses Match.com’s European… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
