Xing has acquired leading Turkish business networking site Cember.net.
Cember.net is said to be the biggest business networking site in Turkey with over 280,000 members. The site is ranked at 117 in Turkey according to Alexa.
Xing said it would use the acquisition to strength its penetration into Turkey, “one of Europe’s fastest growing economies.” Çağlar Erol and Nihan Colak Erol, the founders of Cember.net, will stay on with Xing to support the Turkish-speaking Xing community with a small team based in Istanbul.
The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.
It’s amazing, almost every time I read this blog it’s about another company or website I’ve never heard of being taken over by some other company or business I’ve never heard of.
Rehoboth, perhaps you should read World News more often
In Europe Xing is much larger than Facebook. It’s also a public company, allegedly, the first “2.0 company” to go public, whatever that means.
It was for €4.36 million.
XING Announcement
via Turkish blog Webrazzi
“one of Europe’s fastest growing economies.”
..interesting comment, why then do Europeans, by and lage, not consider Turkey to be part of Europe?
The price of acquisition is quoted to be around 4.4 million Euros. According to a Turkish news site in September 2007 Xing purchased a minority stake, then in December they decided to purchase the whole company.
The conversion effect due to EU membership discussions is showing its first results. It does not really matter whether Turkey joins EU or not, as long as laws and economy is brought up to the European standard Turkey will be a viable big market for anyone who wants to make money. That is why private equity is booming in Turkey (two new funds raised close to $1billion last year alone, small for US or European standards maybe but there was almost nothing until 2006). Once exits like this become more common Venture Capital will be also flow in.
I personally do not want Turkey to join EU and give up control of many economic and legal decisions. Once a strong economy and viable market is established Europe can become a better “customer”.
>In Europe Xing is much larger than Facebook.
hmmm, doesn’t seem so, based on their most recent results report, or they’re not monetizing well from their vast userbase?
Actually according to alexa the biggest social networking in Turkey is yonja.com, rated 33 in Turkey’s top 100.
@Bilen: it’s the biggest “business” networking site. Tell your employer that it’s something different and GTFO.
Bilen
“business social networking”
Nemrut
It’s considered to be Europe geographically, at least the part on the left.
a big event for turkey’s internet platform…
Cember.net was only 2.5 years old and in contrary to similar cases in Europe and US, they did not use any funding at the initial stage. “Being in the right place at the right time”. Congrats, Erol family!
Who cares about turkey? What’s next? News about web firms in Sudan? lol
Burut, you may be ignorant about geography and economical comparisons between world nations, i cant blame you for that. But if you are ignorant, you may try not to speak so that you dont show your ignorance to world.
Thanks Dave!
who cares about Burut? What’s next? People like Borat comment in places like Techcrunch?