BuyWithMe, which rivals group buying / daily deal sites LivingSocial and Groupon in the United States, has been busy this year. The company this morning announced its sixth acquisition for 2011, scooping up San Francisco-based TownHog.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
TownHog was a venture from a startup called DotBlu (formerly known as BluBet), which we had – prematurely – put in the deadpool back in October 2009. Well, to be fair, they said they were shutting down DotBlu indefinitely at the time, but ultimately resurfaced with TownHog later that year.
The company, which ran an online betting play at launch that later morphed to some sort of social gaming service, before it started working on its local commerce service, was backed by a host of star investors (Jawed Karim of YouTube fame and Kevin Hartz of Xoom / Eventbrite to name but a few).
Looks like that third pivot was the right one, although of course we don’t know what BuyWithMe paid for the company, and if DotBlu’s backers are seeing any return on their investments.
Aside from TownHog, Dotblu operates a white-label daily deal business called BluLabel, used by companies such as OpenTable, CBS, the San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate and Citadel. It’s not clear if BluLabel was part of the acquisition or not.
Update: DotBlu founder Song Kim says BluLabel was not part of the deal.
Earlier purchases made this year by BuyWithMe were New York deals site Scoop St., Chicago deals site DealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and LocalTwist.
The company has just hired away Charlie Gray from AOL – he was formerly Executive Vice President at Patch – and appointed him to its new ‘Chief People Officer’.