The Ghosts Of Web 1.0 Are Being Acquired: AllBusiness.com Sells For $55 Million

allbusiness.jpgThe ghosts of Web 1.0 have risen from the dead and are being acquired. Beliefnet was acquired by News Corp yesterday and now Dun & Bradstreet has acquired another Web 1.0 survivor, AllBusiness.com, for $55 million.

AllBusiness.com was founded in 1999 as a business information service targeted primarily at small businesses. The original company was acquired by NBCi in March of 2000 for $225 million and was merged later that year with BigVine.com in a business known as AllBusiness. In April 2002 the company was broken up, with the AllBusiness.com site being reacquired by founder Richard Harroch.

Since that time Allbusiness.com has taken two rounds of funding, $10 million from Vantage Point in 2004 and $12.4 million in a round led by Sutter Hill Ventures that included VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures in 2005.

Dun & Bradstreet said in a short statement that AllBusiness.com would be used to expand D&B’s online presence, with the purchase expected to generate $10 million in incremantal revenue in 2008 and add to earning in 2009.

AllBusiness.com CEO Kath Yates said that the acquisition would marrying AllBusiness.com’s vast library of articles, videos, and podcasts with D&B’s comprehensive company and industry research, creating “one of the largest audiences of intent-driven business decision makers on the Web.”