News Corp has acquired New York based religious community site Beliefnet, according to a report at FishbowlNY.
Beliefnet was founded in 1999 and provides a service that offers commentary and community discussion on various religious beliefs. The company has a checkered history, having declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2002, then restructuring and emerging from bankruptcy in October the same year. According to earlier reports, around 70% of the sites traffic is related to Christian interests, with around 70% of users being females, and the most popular age group being 35 to 45. Beliefnet raised $7 million from Softbank Capital in 2005.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
In related news, a “source fimilar with the matter” has told Reuters that News Corp is not in negotiations to buy LinkedIn, rumors of which first surfaced on TechCrunch UK in November. The source claimed that News Corp was in talks with LinkedIn, but the two companies had been discussing future partnerships, not a takeover. With the Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) acquisition being finalized a partnership between News Corp and LinkedIn would make a lot of sense; the premium business sites from Dow Jones provide a high-wealth business focused demographic that would sit well with LinkedIn’s business networking product.
Update: sources at Fox Interactive are saying they know nothing about the deal; this isn’t to say that its not happening but it is a little strange. The site may have been purchased by another part of News Corp.
Editor’s Update: More scrounging around has confirmed that the deal indeed is about to be officially announced.
Editor’s Update 2: The deal is official. Beliefnet was bought by the Fox Entertainment Group, News Corp’s cable arm, to distribute content from its faith-based programming initiative and from its religious/spiritual book imprints Zondervanand HarperOne. Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, did the deal.
a corporate news company acquires beliefnet. weird. i bet only good christians will receive the best reviews and articles.
Well, the really good news is that we’ll finally know if belie[v/f]ing is worthy…
I don’t believe in that kind of projects. My unique God is Money :p
Just joking! lol
Mark
generally speaking FIM does the internet side of the business, but since I made the update note we’re hearing that it might be the Cable side of Fox/ News, not FIM who made the deal, just updated post now.
Linkedin in itself is well established…..how can it let acquire anyone???
Good merger (for once). Fox News can funnel Christian dogma directly from Beliefnet into Fox News and won’t have to make it up themselves anymore.
If you run a Christian company and go into bankruptcy, isn’t that maybe a sign God wants you to stop?
Please check your facts, stop blogging fiction. Journalism 101
This type of writing feels like the mock video Arrington ran a few months ago where people wanted to comment first.
It feels like I need to do an advert for the blog networks where TC write about anything so long as they are first. TCUK was bad enough with LinkedIn and now this. I appreciate that often a scoop starts as gossip but a little bit of checking wouldn’t hinder the speed of your news breaking ability.
Newscorp acts like a PE it take compaines private and then sells at a higher valuation to others.
Certainly a great asset to have!
Man does it ever suck to be an Athiest these days, I guess next to Sex, the religious industry is second in line as the most profitable. I wonder how long it will be before they jump into that industry.
Jon
Quick, attack the beliefs of Christians and Fox News while the blog is at the top! (/sarcasm)
Good for them! Life is better with God!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
“Good for them! Life is better with God!”
- I’ve noticed very few of the showhosts have any qualms about disclosing they are Christians.
Amen, ‘Steve’.
Besides, I watch FOX News “religously”
Curious - these Christians are now the most watched news network..
Bill Burke
http://wirelessspeech.blogspot.com
Duncan, reason your guys at FIM didn’t know about it is because they didn’t handle. Being done out of Fox Digital, which is in charge of, um, digitizing Fox movies, TV. Details here:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/20.....ition.html
this is a great advertising play - everyone knows people of “faith” will buy whatever you’re selling.
So the majority of the site is religious female Christians age 35-45? And I’m guessing the typical such individual also lives alone in an apartment with cats.
I think Beliefnet has decisively captured the “cat lady” demographic. Kudos.
How ’bout a non-profit one called godblog.org? Anyone want to develop that give me a shout. Sorry for the spam comment.
LinkedIn is more business-oriented networking site, the alliance with religious site does not seem proper to me.
Does anyone know the amount of consideration for this transaction?
Interesting that they also just launched a social network in early Nov…
http://www.informationweek.com.....=202805331
“70% of the sites traffic is related to Christian interests”? Well, that must be broadly defined because the best traffic driver is horoscopes and astrology…
http://beliefnet.tarot.com/beliefnet/index.php
Not that astrology necessarily conflicts, after all the three wise men were astrologers. But not everyone appreciates that. I sure hope that new management stands up to the hate mail…could get ugly as those fundamentalist Fox News fans zero in on astrology as somehow anti-Christian.
Beliefnet has had a social network for over 7 years. I know, I’ve been posting there that long. (The new implementation is full of bugs & needs serious help, perhaps the money from the merger will enable them to hire more techs to fix the problems. That’s the most optimistic view I can have of this happening. Sigh.)
It’s interesting to see the tech take on the buy out here, since the reaction on the the Beliefnet boards/forums is decidely not positive. A lot of atheists, pagans, hindus, muslims, liberal christians & others are VERY unhappy that their home playground/discussion site has been bought by FOX/Murdoch.