
Ask.com buys About.com for $300M  - boopsie
http://www.zdnet.com/ask-com-buys-about-com-for-300m-7000003195/
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hackinthebochs
All this hate for about.com just goes to show how much of a bubble some of you
guys' internet activity exists in. As far as "content farms" go, they are very
good at what they do. The quality of their articles have always been very well
done (for the information I was looking for). I never got the feeling of
landing on an SEO spammer site when I landed about.com. Actually, I used to
spend quite a lot of time on about.com many years ago. Their sections are more
than just content farm pages, they're also communities centered around
specific topics. Think reddit without the childish memes and BS. The quality
of discussions there were always much higher than you'd find on most popular
places on the web today.

Much value exists on the internet outside of the techcrunch echo chamber.
Dismiss it at your own peril.

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tmh88j
>Think reddit without the childish memes and BS.

I agree, however, for simple answers I've had some very good luck on
r/explainlikeimfive. If anyone here hasn't seen that subreddit I suggest
taking a look at it. There are plenty of things that I had no idea about and
someone can explain it very simply in a very short paragraph, compared to a
wall of text that other places might provide (assuming I just want a simple
answer).

Take this for example.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ywh1y/eli...](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ywh1y/eli5_the_spanish_inquisition/)

~~~
hackinthebochs
I didn't mean to imply any hate towards reddit in my original post. While the
quality of some parts is questionable, reddit is undoubtedly a hub filled with
great content and knowledgeable people. Amazingly interesting and insightful
posts await those who are willing to dig for it. My reddit addition is just as
strong as anyone's.

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nhebb
Business Insider has more details here:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-money-the-
new-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-money-the-new-york-
times-was-losing-on-aboutcom-2012-8)

Revenues for About.com have been steadily declining. It's not surprising that
the NYT dumped it. I'm just surprised that there was a bidding war over it.

~~~
AznHisoka
A content farm covering a story about a content farm buying a content farm.

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menacingly
These organizations are both so far removed from my life that you could have
switched their names in the title and it would have had the same impact

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fredsanford
So... A search engine with obnoxious and intrusive ads is going to buy a
mostly mediocre content site with obnoxious and intrusive ads and we're
supposed to be happy and use this stuff?

This will become the Viacom of the internet... Content without content?

~~~
neurotech1
About.com is quite good for content IMO. The ads are kind of annoying though.
I don't think they are $300m good, and they have lost a lot of value due to
open content like Wikipedia.

~~~
fredsanford
Your standards differ from mine then.

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dberg
I worked there and lived through the Primedia and NYT acquisition. The fact
that they have sold this company this many times is amazing. The major equity
holders probably cant believe their own luck.

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mikemarotti
One change to the Google SERP ranking algorithm is going to ruin their day.

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syassami
this is exactly my thoughts. I feel like they haven't been as prevalent as
they were in results a while ago when searching.

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jaredmck
About.com got hit pretty hard by the Panda algorithm change - they have
definitely been less prevalent in search recently, although they still appear
to be reasonably profitable. As far as content farms go, they're one of the
better ones? (since they basically invented the space, and demand etc. took it
to new depths of pathetic content)

~~~
dotborg
machine generated "content" must be profitable, no suprise here

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BlackNapoleon
Its funny when you think about it because you never realize how important that
site is for many people who aren't as savvy as the rest of you all.

Gotta remember that for every person who uses the web, there is someone who
knows even less about it.

There is a niche for everyone. Literally.

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maayank
Some background: there was a month-long bidding war between answers.com and
IAC (ask.com) for about.com[1]. I wonder how things went since IAC's offer[2].
Did Answers upped their offer? Did it went personal and they left the table?
One can wonder.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/27/technology/times-
about/?hpt=...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/27/technology/times-
about/?hpt=hp_t3)

[2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/21/us-nyt-about-
sale-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/21/us-nyt-about-sale-
idUSBRE87K10Y20120821)

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scottilee
This is the first time I'm wishing for an acquisition to shut a product down.

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cstrat
I am amazed Ask.Com is making enough money to fund a 300M purchase... who uses
Ask.Com????

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cstrat
Oh just saw the other comments about the parent and its other subsidiaries.

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danso
I'm constantly amazed at how often I stumble upon About.com's material, even
for topics well covered by more reputable sites. When I think of About.com, I
think of junk content just barely better than Yahoo Answers...but some
sections do have a wide breadth of content that you'd think would be too
technical of minutiae for About.com

Here's their Ruby site: <http://ruby.about.com/>

Note: I can't say the quality of the technical writing is good. I'm just
surprised they try to do so much at all, given the number of great technical
blogs and free references out there (nevermind, ahem, Stack Overflow). It just
goes to show that About.com's content strategy seems to be very lackadaisical

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sabat
Who realized that Ask.com was successful enough to buy someone else for $300M?
Wow.

~~~
freehunter
I actually thought the other way around, I figured About.com was worth more
than 1/3 of an Instagram.

~~~
Achshar
Instagram was paid in cash _and_ stock whose value is now lower that what it
was at the time of sale. This deal however is cash. So the comparison is not
very simple.

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sp332
At the time it was worth $1B total, regardless of how it has depreciated
since. Anyway it's still more than 2x what About.com went for.

