Investopedia, StumbleUpon, FeedBurner and Last.fm

Recent Internet Acquisitions

Recently numerous acquisitions took place online and some of these websites are very well-known. Let’s take a quick look at some of these deals – which are making big news.

Investopedia and StumbleUpon

Two famous websites are no longer Canadian. Although everyone knew these acquisitions were coming, it was not expected to occur so fast and in a row.

Edmonton based Investopedia founded in 1999 and draws roughly 2,500,000 monthly viewers. Investopedia provides financial education to investors. On April 11, 2007, media giant Forbes bought Investopedia. Terms and conditions of the sale were not disclosed. You can visit Investopedia by clicking here – Investopedia.

Calgary based StumbleUpon founded in 2001. StumbleUpon is something like but not exactly a search engine. It searches for sites based on user’s personal preferences and other user recommendations. This has been known as discovery search, which can be seen as next generation search. Currently StumbleUpon has more than 2.3 million registered users. On May 30, 2007, EBay bought StumbleUpon for $75 million cash. You can visit StumbleUpon by clicking here – StumbleUpon.

FeedBurner

The rumour that Google is buying FeedBurner has come to an end in May. How much Google paid for this deal is unknown but if you perform an Internet search by putting Google and FeedBurner, $100 million in search results will catch your eye.

It is not surprising that Google wants to enter the rapidly growing RSS Feed ad market. FeedBurner has gained so much popularity that it will be an easy access for Google into the RSS world. This is a very smart move and my guess would in the future, Google would want to buy sites like Technorati, Netvibes etc. We have to wait to see how many more sites Google acquire. You can visit FeedBurner by clicking here – FeedBurner.

Last.fm

If you like music, you would love last fm. Last.fm is an Internet radio, but wait, it is no ordinary Internet radio like you have tried before.

Last.fm keeps track of what you listen and based on your taste, it suggests you tracks and presents other users who are similar to your taste. This feature is very unique. I listen to New Age type of music and I know how hard it can be to keep track of all new albums and artists. If I was keeping track of my music all by myself, I would have never found some of the artists from different parts of the World. And now, I have a network of thousands of users like me to suggest albums and artists and i am sure music will never sound the same with Last.fm. There are lots of other features such as you can ask Last.fm not to play a track if you don’t like it or you can express your love for a track and each time Last.fm will make a note of your likings or dislikings and it filters out the worst to give you the best the next time. US media giant CBS Corporation bought Last.fm on May 30, 2007. You can visit last.fm by clicking here – Last.fm.

These sites attract massive traffic on a daily basis because users find these sites useful and beyond ordinary. When companies like EBay, Forbes and CBS buy any sites, definitely they have business on mind. While doing business, I hope these sites will still be useful and able to meet users’ expectations, like the way they have been.

Originally published on Friday, July 6, 2007 on www.adawn.net. I will be transferring all my articles from Canada’s Personal Finance Website. You will see articles from www.adawn.net being posted here once in a while. Thanks