Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Answers Buys Webcollage

web collageAnswers site Answers has purchased Webcollage, a startup that helps companies manage their marketing materials on retailers’ websites.

Webcollage lets companies like Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft distribute videos, photos and other “rich media” elements to sites like Walmart.com. Answers didn’t provide a purchase price, but I’m told that it was north of $30 million — but not as much as the $37 million figure reported in the Israeli press.

Answers, which claims 180 million users, makes almost all of its money via advertising. But you can see the outlines of a new b-to-b revenue stream taking shape: Last year, the company acquired ResellerRatings, which creates “post-purchase” reviews from customers who leave an e-commerce site; now they’ve bought a company that helps generate sales when customers first come to those same sites.

Last summer, Answers tried to buy About.com from the New York Times, but were outbid by Barry Diller and IAC.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald