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Who's Buying Technorati?

by Mark Evans on Sat 13 Aug 2005 09:08 AM EDT | Permanent Link

The rumormill is rumbling with news that the sale of Technorati could be happening soon. While Technorati seems like a natural acquisition target given its presence within the blog ecosystem, you have to wonder how much it's worth given the company's business model is relatively immature. How much do you pay for a company that appears to make much of its revenue from Google's Adsense program? Using traditional financial metrics, Technorati's value should probaby be modest. That said, how much of a premium are you willing to play for a company with a high profile and lots of traffic in a fast growing market? Your guess is as good as mine but I'm willing to bet Technorati will be another entrepreneurial home run for founder David Sifry and Technorati's major VC investors, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital. As for a buyer, the obvious candidates are Google, which has done little with blogs, and Yahoo, which has been building its blog portfolio with the recent acquisitions of blo.gs and Flickr. I wouldn't discount News Corp. given Rupert Murdoch has made it clear the company will establish a bigger presence on the Web. Tom Raftery does a nice job putting together a variety of news items and industry speculation to add some insight into the Technorati rumors.

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Comments

Re: Who's Buying Technorati?

by Anonymous on Sat 13 Aug 2005 04:05 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Mark,

thanks for the link and the kind words about my post,

Cheers,

Tom.

Re: Who's Buying Technorati?

by Jeremy Maddock on Thu 18 Aug 2005 12:35 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I think the Technorati service has some value due to its high profile, established brand, and huge number of users. I see what you mean, however about them not having many ways of turning all these things into money. (Maybe a new owner will do a better job.)

Just today, Technorati has started putting big "sponsored links" Adsense blocks right in the middle of all the tag pages. It looks to me like a lame attempt to boost revenue, and thus perceived value before they sell out.

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