MTV buys Neopets for $160M
Great post about inconsistencies of coverage in the social software/blogging space that will run stories for 2 weeks based on one sentence on a rumour from Dave Winer about Google launching an Itunes like service (remember Microsoft's mantra, where I worked; "Emulate and extend") but there is no coverage of MTV buying neopets for $160M. These guys have been in it for the long haul. And nice to see some M+A not from Yahoo or Google.
"I'm fascinated by Viacom's decision to buy Neopets, the wildly popular online synthesis of Pokemon and Sim City. And I'm equally fascinated by how few people are seemingly paying attention. Here we have one of the most successful pieces of social software ever, so successful that it is being purchased by a major media company for $160-million, and the story is getting remarkably little play in social software circles.
Why is the acquisition interesting? Well ...
* Neopets has grown from 90,000 subscribers in 2000 to more than 25-million today
* The social software company has eight-figure revenue and is cash-flow positive
* It has taken no venture money, and no professional outside capital of any kind that I'm aware of
* It is one of the fastest-growing sites on the web, and is consistently among the 10 stickiest sites in the world (according to Nielsen/Netratings)"And yet, no-one seemingly cares that this wildly successful non-venture-backed social software company is being bought for a nice chunk of change by Viacom. It is worth paying attention to -- something important been proven here, and folks in social software should be noticing."
I also liked this post from Tony Gentile of Buzzhit :
"Regular readers might remember that I was graciously included in the launch of Feedster's Media Network offering back in late April. At the time, I mentioned that I was experimenting with a variety of RSS ad providers, that I would run Feedster's ads on my blog until their RSS solution was ready, and that I'd report back on my results/findings.
Well, after roughly two months of poorly targeted contextual ads, I have a whopping $1.87 "pending" in my Feedster/Adbrite account. (It's pending because $1.87 isn't nearly enough to trigger a payout.) During the period, there were 14,253 impressions and 24 clicks, for a CTR of 0.00168 (or roughly a sixth of one percent), an effective (i.e., my share) CPC of $0.078, and an effective CPM of $0.13. I received zero offers to run ads directly on my site for the automatically computed price of $11.88/day or $285.00/mth; two notes on that... 1) who would given the published CTR of the house ads, and 2) I did zero to promote this myself, relying on the "your ad here" link to do its thing.
So, experiment over, and I'm moving on. Next up is Google Adsense (for the blog). It will sit in the same location as the Feedster/AdBrite ads, and will be Google's standard skyscraper form-factor. Details when I hit a comparable number of impressions (which may be a bit, as my Google traffic has fallen off significantly since the last dance).
On the RSS Ads front... still waitng for something compelling enough to turn you all into a bunch of guiena pigs... perhaps new options will be available after Gnomedex? ;-)"
Finish my quick blog today with the as usual brillaint round-up of the gawker tom cruise/scientology/kate holmes story :
Fox 411s Roger Friedman makes the alien abduction comparisons seem much more literal, reporting that Katie Holmes suffered 16 missing days between a Save the Music concert and the infamous day the flacks announced her relationship with Tom Cruise. Only one thing seems certain: Probing was not involved [Fox 411]
Those missing days probably flew by while the preclear ? Holmes slogged through the 343 questions on the Scientology auditing list. (Sample: Have you ever made a practice of confusing people ? Have you ever smothered a baby ? We're pretty sure the one about the baby is a trick question. [Radar Online]
�� DreamWorks and Paramount will probably get stuck with Cruise's massive hotel bill from the French leg of his WOTW tour, as 34 rooms worth of security and Scientology staffers can wreak some serious havoc on the minibar."
"I'm fascinated by Viacom's decision to buy Neopets, the wildly popular online synthesis of Pokemon and Sim City. And I'm equally fascinated by how few people are seemingly paying attention. Here we have one of the most successful pieces of social software ever, so successful that it is being purchased by a major media company for $160-million, and the story is getting remarkably little play in social software circles.
Why is the acquisition interesting? Well ...
* Neopets has grown from 90,000 subscribers in 2000 to more than 25-million today
* The social software company has eight-figure revenue and is cash-flow positive
* It has taken no venture money, and no professional outside capital of any kind that I'm aware of
* It is one of the fastest-growing sites on the web, and is consistently among the 10 stickiest sites in the world (according to Nielsen/Netratings)"And yet, no-one seemingly cares that this wildly successful non-venture-backed social software company is being bought for a nice chunk of change by Viacom. It is worth paying attention to -- something important been proven here, and folks in social software should be noticing."
I also liked this post from Tony Gentile of Buzzhit :
"Regular readers might remember that I was graciously included in the launch of Feedster's Media Network offering back in late April. At the time, I mentioned that I was experimenting with a variety of RSS ad providers, that I would run Feedster's ads on my blog until their RSS solution was ready, and that I'd report back on my results/findings.
Well, after roughly two months of poorly targeted contextual ads, I have a whopping $1.87 "pending" in my Feedster/Adbrite account. (It's pending because $1.87 isn't nearly enough to trigger a payout.) During the period, there were 14,253 impressions and 24 clicks, for a CTR of 0.00168 (or roughly a sixth of one percent), an effective (i.e., my share) CPC of $0.078, and an effective CPM of $0.13. I received zero offers to run ads directly on my site for the automatically computed price of $11.88/day or $285.00/mth; two notes on that... 1) who would given the published CTR of the house ads, and 2) I did zero to promote this myself, relying on the "your ad here" link to do its thing.
So, experiment over, and I'm moving on. Next up is Google Adsense (for the blog). It will sit in the same location as the Feedster/AdBrite ads, and will be Google's standard skyscraper form-factor. Details when I hit a comparable number of impressions (which may be a bit, as my Google traffic has fallen off significantly since the last dance).
On the RSS Ads front... still waitng for something compelling enough to turn you all into a bunch of guiena pigs... perhaps new options will be available after Gnomedex? ;-)"
Finish my quick blog today with the as usual brillaint round-up of the gawker tom cruise/scientology/kate holmes story :
Fox 411s Roger Friedman makes the alien abduction comparisons seem much more literal, reporting that Katie Holmes suffered 16 missing days between a Save the Music concert and the infamous day the flacks announced her relationship with Tom Cruise. Only one thing seems certain: Probing was not involved [Fox 411]
Those missing days probably flew by while the preclear ? Holmes slogged through the 343 questions on the Scientology auditing list. (Sample: Have you ever made a practice of confusing people ? Have you ever smothered a baby ? We're pretty sure the one about the baby is a trick question. [Radar Online]
�� DreamWorks and Paramount will probably get stuck with Cruise's massive hotel bill from the French leg of his WOTW tour, as 34 rooms worth of security and Scientology staffers can wreak some serious havoc on the minibar."
posted by redbarren at 10:08 PM
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