Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Here to Make Friends: Why Quepasa Is Paying $100M for myYearbook

Publicly traded Latino social network Quepasa will pay $100 million for teen-heavy social network myYearbook, in what the companies are calling a merger.

MyYearbook CEO Geoff Cook argued, in a note he sent to AllThingsD, that playing games and using apps with new people — which is what myYearbook focuses on — is a different and potentially superior experience to doing so on Facebook, where posts about game play can pollute users’ interactions with existing friends and family. Quepasa, for its part, makes games for various social platforms through its Quepasa Games studio.

Cook, who will be Quepasa COO, writes:

“Finding a new friend is for many the search of a lifetime. It’s a search that may peak as a teen and young adult when so many enduring relationships are forged, but it extends beyond those years to everyone young or old. Meeting new people is now – and has always been—one of the Internet’s core activities, from the early days of AOL chat rooms to the glory days of Myspace to the unrealized promise of Chatroulette’s ‘Next’ button.”

The two companies had a combined $33.6 million in revenue in the past year, and 70.9 million registered users. Quepasa’s contribution to the merger breaks down to $82 million in stock and $18 million in cash.

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