I first met Yedda founders Avichay Nissenbaum and Yaniv Golan during a trip to Israel in February 2006. The company, which hosts a question and answer service that is similar in some ways to Yahoo Answers, launched later that year.
Tonight they’re announcing their acquisition by AOL. Terms are not being disclosed. The current plan, says Yedda, is to keep the company as an independent business operating from its current location in Tel Aviv with the current team. They will gradually integrate it into the AOL properties.
Yedda has evolved significantly since last year. They still compete directly with Yahoo and others, but they also partner with others to power independent Q&A services as well. There are more than fifty partners working with Yedda now - example partners are ePals and TheJobNetwork. Yedda says those partners now drive 90% of their total traffic.
The company, which has raised $2.5 million in venture capital, is still small but growing rapidly. Comscore shows a big jump in usage since the summer, from 215,000 unique users in June to nearly 800,000 last month (see above, this does not count partner traffic).
Congratulations Yedda!
Mind comparing Yedda to Yahoo Answers?
Great news yedda.
http://www.meetingflex.com/SearchVideo.aspx
Blazing fast video search ……………………………………….:-)……………….=:>…
i cant believe this site got acquired.. its no wonder AOL went sown the tubes, ita crappy acquisitions and overall bad management.
Congrats to Yaniv and Avichai. Really happy for them.
so why exactly did they need to acquire it? Are you telling me noone in AOL could figure out how to build a similar application?
It proves an importance of a partner program that is a real driver of traffic to a site
“It proves an importance of a partner program that is a real driver of traffic to a site”
+1
It also makes the company more attractive to potential buyers. People crying out that it’s easy to build an application like this - it’s not only the technology, but the business legwork required in signing up partner sites that made Yedda an attractive *company* to acquire. It’s not just some cool web2.0 product that does nothing in terms of adding value to Yahoo’s business strategy.
In other words, people wouldn’t use it if it was tied too closely to AOL-the-brand.
Great for the founders but what is the mgt at AOL smokin?
Congratulations, Yedda!
Don- you asked about comparing? Yahoo Answers quickly turned into a gaming arena, encouraged by Yahoo who announced that people reaching various levels would receive gifts (though they never sent any). So, people (whether they had knowledge or not) just answered any-old-question. Yedda encourages people who have expertise in a field to give valuable answers…
Congrats to Yedda team!
While this is great news for Yedda, might this exit have come a little too early?
Wow, congratulations to yaniv golan and avichai!
Amazing news for them!
great more funding for war between jews and muslims.
Congrats Yaniv and the whole Yedda team!
Happy to be with Yedda. It’s great!!
Mazal Tov to Yedda…
However in my opinion, it’s another shot in the foot for AOL. Bad acquisition all around.
On a separate note: Check out my pics of Ad:Tech NY at - http://www.seovice.ning.com
Wow!!! These guys are killers and Avichai is a serial killer who makes it one exit after another!
I am happy for them. I hope the move is good for AOL too.
The graph shows good jump in traffic, hopefully they are more focused and centralized on specific niche.
this move is good for AOL ?
Is it me, or does AOL always seem to get into things last? When is the last time they had a thought of their own? The spiraling continues!
We’ve been consistantly ahead of Yedda in traffic for a year, and in features & functionality.
I have no idea what they did with the 2.5 million in funding, but if they get even that much for their site as an acquisition, then ours with more than a million visitors, twice the number of registered users, should be worth far more.
Who buys an application on .net anyway, when none of AOL’s infrastructure is built on Windows?
Would someone please explain how this site is different/better than Yahoo! Answers?
Wiki.Answers.com is the second largest after Yahoo Answers. Wiki is part of another Israel co Answers.com listed on the Nasdaq ANSW
Congrats & Best of luck to Yedda!
Jeremy -
Why didn’t AOL buy your company?
Mike-
>>>why didn’t AOL buy your company?
A guess? Lack of venture funding…we have none, and as a bootstrapped startup, we have a lot less connections, etc. Also, the Yedda team is based in Israel. We’re in Cupertino + other parts of the world (headquarters = cupertino). Since AOL has operations in Israel, they can integrate the team better.
My other guess as to why AOL didn’t buy us, but purchased yedda…FunAdvice has never publicly claimed “proprietary technology” such as Yedda’s semantic analysis infrastructure, and they talked about weighted bits of stuff on graphs, etc….we’ve never done that
In fact, of the large Q&A sites (I’m using Compete / Quantcast - use comscore & probably get different numbers):
Yahoo Answers (1)
Wiki Answrs (2)
Answerbag (3)
FunAdvice (4)
Askville (5)
MSN QnA (6)
Yedda (7)
Only Yedda of this list claims “semantic technology”…none, not one, of the others have. Yahoo = 14 million uniques or so, Wiki Answers = 11 million or so, Answerbag = 4 million or so, and FunAdvice = more than a million.
Askville / MSN are hard to gauge, but compete & quantcast pub them smaller than us by a mile. Same with Yedda.
Of that list, FunAdvice is the only Q&A site without a mega corp backing it OR venture funding (demand media = parent of answerbag, with 220 million in funding).
Jeremy,
You claim AOL did not purchase your company because of lack of funding / being part of a mega corp, your location in Cupertino, or the fact you have never claimed “proprietary technology”?
I’m inclined to think there are other reasons as well . . .and if you are in fact bigger than Yedda, I assume your company was contacted by AOL as well or identified as a potential opportunity.
Of course AOL talked to us…6-8 months ago
I even worked at Yahoo for almost two years.
However, AOL didn’t call us again recently.
what is the business model for these Q& A websites.
Why these big funding/VC is interested in solving/answering others questions, in this greedy world of business.
ASEBU MINING COMPANY GH LTD.
Dealers in precious stone and Alluvial Gold
LOCATION 18 BREMAH CLOSE AKWETIA GHANA.
P.O.BOX AK:13
Email:asiebughcompany@yahoo.co.in
We the ASIEBU Company are pleased to make this offer of AU Metal Gold/ Dust under the penalty of perjury and with full corporate and legal responsibility to the following terms and conditions.
1. Product : AU Metal (Gold)
2. Origin : Ghana West Africa
3. Type : Alluvial
4. Purity : 22.5 Carat or 95%
5.Quantity: 400 kilos PROCEDURES:
One representative of the buyer is suppose to come down to (Accra-Ghana) for the inspection and random sampling of our Gold Dust. or make plans for the goods to be ship to he/she destination.
We look forward to establishing a long lasting business relationship with you.
Thanks
Mr Kweku Asiedu.