Bitwine, a service launched in late 2006 that lets people ask questions to experts for a fee. Originally the service was tethered to Skype; more recently it began letting users connect to experts via Skype, other VoIP service, or normal phone lines. Experts can charge their clients either by the minute or a simple flat fee. Clients pay by PayPal and the money gets sent to experts as soon as the sessions end. The service is also available as a white label product.
Monster Venture Partners will announce tomorrow that they have acquired a controlling interest in the startup, and are replacing CEO Elad Baron with a former Expedia Exec, Ronnie Gurion (Baron will remain on as President and CTO). The acquisition price was not disclosed; Bitwine had previously raised $1.5 million in a round of financing from Crossbar Capital.
MVP says Bitwine will power online consultation features that are in development across several other portfolio companies, including Questions.com, Careers.org, Patents.com, Traveler.com and Slideshow.com.
Well at least the graph in Eric’s next post about all liquidity drying up won’t be completely flatlined
Good deal
They are on the right track. I do have one big question for MonsterVentures with all there domain expertise they should know the following:
Who has the greatest strategic cluster of niche location based domains ever created? We know it exists. Who owns it? 9 years in the keyphrase natural language domain arena here is “my” best guess.
http://professi...%3AVideo%3A4108
These guys are smart about common sense “natural language location”and its importance to a websites success.
MonsterVentures is very interesting, If only there were more companies like them out there the internet would make alot more sense than it does now.
VentureLocator.com
Congrats to the Bitwine group.
Too bad that MVP is known for pulling a Tom Vu and buying distressed properties at extremely low valuations. I don’t know if a congratulations is in order or a eulogy.
the domain name sucks. i thought it was a wine company.
I thought it was wine made from bits.
goood
Liveperson.com – similar service better name.
Yeah worst domain ever for this service…..and i don’t see that much traffic going to it for anybody to acquire it….monster must have been told to get rid of some money by their accountants but even so to buy this is just desperate……
Автору респект, жду еще чего нибудь по этой теме
Ваш блог мог бы приносить неплохие деньги :)