British site Where Are You Now? (WAYN), a social network for meeting fellow travelers, is rumored to be in negotiations with AOL to be bought for $200 million. That would make it one of the biggest Web 2.0 acquisitions of a UK startup after CBS’s $280 million purchase of Last.fm.
TechCrunch UK has the scoop:
Social travel site WAYN is allegedly in talks with AOL over a possible $200m sale to the consumer portal giant. A spokesperson for the UK startup denied that any sale talks are taking place. However, I have tonight spoken to three well-placed sources who have all independently quoted the $200m figure to me, and named AOL as the prospective buyer.
. . . the fact that no deal has been announced yet is put down by my sources to delicate negotiations around a generous earn-out clause proposed by the founders. And the signs are that this is proving to be a sticking point in negotiations. The site is only on course to bring in $4.5m of revenues this year, a figure which contrasts markedly with the exit price.
WAYN raised $11 million in 2006 from DFJ Esprit and a gaggle of British entrpreneurs, including Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman. ComScore, which only recently started tracking the site, counts 3.6 million unique visitors in November worldwide. The company says it has 9 million registered users.
The purported $200 million price tag seems steep, at more than 40 times revenues. But the site also makes money through affiliate deals with travel sites like Kayak. Travel sites are all about lead generation.
If they can sell their site for that much, then I can sell my blog with 1000 monthly uniques for about $500,000. Come talk to me AOL, I will give you half off that price.
That site is one of the biggest spam generators in the country. Barely a week goes by without an email arriving in my inbox, purporting to be from some distant acquaintance but actually being a “WAYN request from x”. I hope it closes!
a social network for meeting fellow travelersDang commies.
200.000.000 …200.000.000 ?????
I hope my site TripnTale can get half that money
AOL has in the last few months purchased 2 second tier sites, Yedda and now Wayn for amazingly high valuations. If they can generate $15 mil in revenues from both of these sites in ‘08 I will be amazed.
Who is running this company??? AOL is on the fast track to the dead pool.
I remember comments here a few months ago to the effect that social networking was dead.
Seems however, in some segments…it is still considered a big strategic play.
I would be happy if my site sold for 1 million!
The site is actually pretty well-done and nicely targeted at a young, mobile, international demographic. The big mystery is how they attracted so many users in so many countries so quickly.
Don’t know if it’s objectively worth $200 million, but this deal kind of makes sense for AOL.
What else are they going to do? Without an infusion of fresh excitement like this, AOL is a dead fish. They stopped publicly touting their subscriber numbers years ago, because subs have imploded. It makes sense for them to use what money they have to snap up sites like this.
The trick is “email spams” that are sent in the name of friend invites. This same trick was optimized by Flixster and many others.
And then there’s http://asmallworld.net and http://extravigator.com which are upscale travel social sites — the complete polar opposites of WAYN.
The spam rumor is validated - check out the stumbleupon social bookmark reviews over the past years.
200 million USD for 3.6 million monthly uniques! Crikey mate! Totally bonkers.
Mike Butcher (TCUK) predicted that News Corp would buy LinkedIn and now that WAYN will be bought by AOL. I doubt it very much.
This sounds like a VC using Techcrunch as a public sounding board to test the waters. It also looks like the VC’s are starting to offload their investments before the credit crunch hits.
Good luck to them - its a pretty good site - they have near 6m uniques and growing quite quickly
Further to the comments referred to in TechCrunch on Jan 16th we would like to confirm that WAYN has at no point had discussions with AOL and are not currently looking for a strategic sale.
WAYN is unique in that it is focused on the travel vertical which represents by far the largest online sector and we are excited about the new products we are introducing to our members and the prospect of developing into the mobile space with location based data and services being one of our core strengths. We benefit from a broad demographic with over 50% of our UK users over the age of 35. We are also one of the only social networks which is 18+ to improve the safety for our users.
Privacy and account interaction options are extremely comprehensive allowing users full control over mail, updates and contact from other members. Since the site opened up to all members as a free service with unlimited storage and no restrictions on contact we have enjoyed huge growth to more than 10m members worldwide and have invested heavily in launching new travel and lifestyle related services for them.
Our present focus is to create long term value and build a truly successful business. The WAYN vision is to become the world’s largest and most successful travel and lifestyle community portal and our management team is solely focused on achieving that goal.
If there are any questions regarding the WAYN travel/lifestyle services or to receive information about future announcements from WAYN please contact +44 (0) 20 7336 8088 or annika.erskine@wayn.com.
Doh! Techcrunch F***ed up!
Pull your finger out guys! UK TC is so lame.. up the game guys.. 1 post a day!
You can do better..
This is just a rumour - as far as I know WAYN website is not going to be sold to anyone.
I don’t think that this is true. I work closely in the social networking environment and don’t believe this story.
Thanks for your help on this Annika. You’ll note I carried WAYN’s position on the story, as you described it. My sources continue to tell me that sale talks are happening, and anyone reading the whole story on TCUK will note that even the lead VC on this has already indicated on his blog that a sale to a company the size of AOL would be the preferred option. As usual, stories like this may or may not come to fruition. Talks can go either way. We’re just here to report.
Good luck to all concerned!
When we conceive, create and publish our ideas online we all want (without exception I would say) an exit on attractive multiples. It may not be the driving force but it is there nevertheless. Along with site statistics, it is the only measure by which we can judge how others see how successful our businesses are.
In addition, the founders can reward themselves for their endeavours and sacrifices; the VCs can set aside some of their profit to invest in yet more start-ups and other entrepreneurs can take inspiration.
Everyone is a winner.
exiva.com- share your life, treasure the privacy
hey, i like to talk