A speculative story in InternetNews.com discusses the future of Six Apart, asking whether it's a prime target for Yahoo to add to its portfolio of offerings.
The article quotes David Hornik, a Six Apart board member and a partner in August Capital, saying, "Six Apart is not in conversations about being acquired by anyone." Last October, Six Apart received $10 million in Series B funding from August Capital.
Six Apart owns Movable Type, TypePad and Live Journal (it acquired the latter last month through its acquisition of Danga Interactive).
When Ask Jeeves acquired Bloglines earlier this week, eyes turned again to Six Apart as the last free-standing blogging service, InternetNews says, speculating that Ask Jeeves might be interested in buying Six Apart.
InternetNews quotes Jim Lanzone, Ask Jeeves' senior vice president of search properties, saying, "There's a lot of things we'd consider buying - or partnering for or building."
InternetNews.com | Should Yahoo Buy Six Apart?
See also: Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? on The Internet Stock Blog.
That's what happens when you dance with the Devil. You eventually have to pay the price.
Six Apart took VC funding. VCs aren't in the game for the glory of humankind, but to make money. If they see an opportunity to flip Six Apart to make cash, you can bet that that is what's going to happen.
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper | 12 February 2005 at 20:07
You may be right, Jeremy, re flipping to make cash. That's what seems to be the expected outcome for a VC firm. Either cash or some other equity return.
If the speculation about Yahoo, Ask Jeeves or anyone else re acquiring Six Apart turns out to be true, then no doubt that would be one outcome.
David Jackson's detailed commentary on The Internet Stock Blog is most interesting in zeroing in what the interest is here - it's all to do with advertising, according to Jackson:
"Why won't Yahoo! just build its own blogging platform? First, because the serious blogs with the most readers - and thus the greatest PPC ad potential - have already been built with Blogger, TypePad or Movable Type. And second, because Yahoo! is far behind Google and Microsoft, and acquiring Six Apart would vault it to the front.
"With its recently announced acquisition of LiveJournal, Six Apart has 6.5 million users. All of them are likely lost to Overture ads and potentially lost to Yahoo!'s future bundle of personal Web tools.
"Unless, of course, Yahoo! acquires Six Apart."
And he says this:
"This post now highlights another weakness in Yahoo!'s competitive position: Yahoo! seems to have underestimated the commercial importance of blogs, trails Google and MSN in the blogging market, and will end up being forced to acquire Six Apart in the near future for a handsome sum."
So will it happen? Well, according to the denial by David Hornik quoted in the InternetNews.com story, there are no talks going on with anyone. That certainly doesn't mean it won't happen!
Plus, I always get a little suspicious when you see such emphatic denials to speculations like this...
Posted by: Neville Hobson | 13 February 2005 at 13:51