CarDomain and StreetFire, the no. 1 and no. 2 social networks for car enthusiasts, respectively, have merged. An announcement will be made later this morning. StreetFire CEO Glenn Rogers will run the combined entity, although CarDomain is the acquiring company and has a majority of the equity. CarDomain founder and Chairman Alex Algard will become Chairman of the combined entity. The companies will continue to maintain separate offices, Seattle for CarDomain and Los Angeles for StreetFire.
CarDomain was funded entirely by Algard. StreetFire has taken two rounds of financing totalling nearly $8 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Jeremy Liew, the Lightspeed partner who led those investments, will take a board seat at the combined entity.
The companies cater to car enthusiasts which are for the most part men between 16-30. Comscore shows relatively flat growth over the last year for both sites – 3.2 million monthly uniques worldwide for CarDomain, and 1.1 million for StreetFire. The companies say their internal Google Analytics show about 5 million uniques combined for the company, after removing estimated duplicate audience. WidgetFire also has a video widget that reaches another 4 million or so unique visitors a month via sites that have embedded it.
Both companies have gone through layoffs in the last year. CarDomain has trimmed staff to a dozen from fifty employees a year ago. StreetFire has also let about 8 staff go, and is also currently at a dozen employees. The companies say no further layoffs are needed and expects to hit profitability this summer.