Yahoo Makes Tiny Acquisition: BuzzTracker

YHOO is struggling to gain the market share very hard. Their share price is within the lowest in 52-wk period.

well this acquisition sure as hell isn’t going to make a difference.

There is a small possibility that something in the Buzz Tracker tech caught their eye, and they just could not help picking it up for the price. Unfortunately, I am hard pressed to see what that something is.

Though, a social aggregater white label would be interesting. I wonder if Jerry is listening. Ah well, back to reading the Prince stream…

$5 million sign-on fee for how many employees? The about page just lists an MBA/BSEE and a politics major. If it is just those two, it’s not the worst cash-out I could think of for a News 2.0 startup. It will be interesting to see whether that is at the high or low end of expectations in the future.

Its so unfortunate that smaller companies & groups are coming up with innovative and intelligent ideas & the big guns are doing nothing but sitting idle and buying such startups without investing their brains.

Maybe Im wrong, but I always thought Techmeme was by far the best tech out there when it came to news/buzz trackers. I dont understand this purchase unless its just the way chosen to hire their CEO.
Could somebody throw an estimated valuation for Techmeme given Techcrunch readers experience, the amount paid for Buzz tracker and the market momentum? Thanks in advance.

Seems obvious to me that the purchase is to get the people (person?) not the website over to Yahoo. Much like most of google’s acquisitions.

Otherwise $5 mil is *way* too much for basically another RSS aggregator.

Paul, you have a point there. Nice payday for the founders, apparently. Good for them.

I don’t see anything particularly sexy about that site either though.

Note to self: Refrain from leaving spammy comments on blog posts to get more traffic.

So, basically you have to have inside contacts to be picked by bug guns. sad.

#6, agree, Techmeme is really best of breed. I think yahoo really should have gone after them. But I doubt they’d get ‘em for less that $50mil, maybe even more.

Meet Alan Warms. You’ll understand why they bought BuzzTracker. The energy level at Y! News just doubled.

yahoo news is worth the investment. its been an extremely durable traffic conduit for eleven years, and that isn’t going to change. they have a good formula that is enduring in the face of web2 crap - make the news simple, fast, and constantly updated.

Does anyone knows the traffic metrics for Buzztracker? We all know that Techmeme has bout 25 000 daily visitors. I do agree with most comments; Techmeme and far better service adn I suppose a far better Technology. But more than 50million for Techmeme is too much…

According to Compete.com (yes, I know, not the most accurate of numbers, but whatever), BuzzTracker gets 33,600 users/mo, meaning Yahoo paid close to $150 per user (!). Granted, this acquisition is not about getting traffic, but there are not many other metrics to use here since BuzzTracker was pre-revenue.

Compete says TechMeme gets 140,000 users/mo. If you apply the $150 per user, this would value TechMeme at around $21M. Throw in another $9M for TechMeme being a category leader with sexier technology and you get to about $30M. Sounds like a good ballpark valuation for TechMeme, no?

Scott, ok, but is he now going to leave spammy comments linking back to Yahoo news all over the web? He sounds like amateur hour to me.

Im assuming they liked both the tech and the people. Maybe they hope to get something similar working for delicious that works out better than their popular tag?

I still haven’t seen on the twenty or so blog stories on this exactly how many employees Participate Media has. Anyone? Bueller?

Paul, Participate Media IS Al Warms. There’s no huge staff to talk about. Having worked for Mr. Warms at his previous venture, I’m kinda befuddled that Yahoo would hire him as GM of News. It doesn’t seem like a cultural fit. Maybe that says more about Yahoo these days than it does about Warms.

I agree that techmeme is the best, megite is keeping up in the niche topics.

Thanks Pimento. Well, given that there was zero dilution from angel or VC according to Fred Wilson, that must make Al himself a multimillionaire on this deal alone. Good for him.

One of the major takeaways from this deal has to be the power of networking. A chance meet at a conf leads to a $5 million exit? Damn, I need to get on the next plane to the Valley to press the flesh.