Accoona, the highly suspect New Jersey based search/electronics retailer, has suffered what might be its final disgrace – the closure of its last business, Twing.
The company, which offered a search product, has a rich history. Founder Marc Armand Rousso has a shady past involving stock fraud, and former President Bill Clinton was a spokesperson for the company.
Most of Accoona’s $137 million/year in revenue came from distributing electronics after buying a number of retailers in Brooklyn. In 2007 they canceled a planned IPO. The reason? The underwriter pulled the plug, saying “After completing our due diligence review, we have chosen to disassociate ourselves with the company.”
Recently, the Accoona search business was sold to Masterseek, a Danish company, last month.
The company said in April they were deprioritizing all of their businesses except Twing, a forum search engine. But the Twing website is now offline, and a tipster says the technology is being sold.
Twing, which appears to be a separate corporate entity from Accoona, was said to be pitching for a small round of financing in the last few months at a valuation of $8 million.
The service had a surge in traffic this last spring, drawing, according to Compete, a peak of about 1.5 million unique monthly visitors. But much (or all) of that traffic was driven by advertising spends, says a source, and they struggled to get repeat visitors.
We’ve contacted Accoona and Twing and await a response. Unless they say otherwise, it’s deadpooled.