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Seriously? Acquired for "tens of millions of dollars", half a million dollars in funding? I'm not usually the one to ask things like this but could someone plea
by mmelin 16y ago
Seriously? Acquired for "tens of millions of dollars", half a million dollars in funding? I'm not usually the one to ask things like this but could someone please explain what they're buying here?
400k users signed up during beta, okay, but for a service like this I don't see how that translates to these kinds of numbers.
If they have data that tells them they can convert a meaningful percentage of users to a premium plan, sure, but somehow I doubt that's AOL's plan.
- wyclif 16y agoWhat problem does About.me solve? Seriously, I want to know. Wasn't Google Profiles supposed to be for this use case? I'm not sure why the tech public needs a bunch of fragmented personal identity domains.
- ronnier 16y ago"Vanity acquisitions do serve one purpose: wealth redistribution. Take money from public companies (bye 401k!) and give it to a lottery few" -dhh http://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/15547006609006592 http://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/15547006609006592
- rokhayakebe 16y agoI agree. In all fairness it is in people's nature to buy from their friends even if it doesn't always make sense.
- aditya 16y agoTalent acquisition? Tony's a seasoned entrepreneur and he built a pretty good team, that's worth the price. EDIT: Also, if 20mm AOL users now have an about.me profile that can become a huge part of AOL's push into social, that would be worth it too.
- johnrob 16y agoKeep in mind, a founding team like that is probably worth 10s of millions to a company like AOL (assuming they retain them for several years).
- ojbyrne 16y agoWhy exactly? Because of their ability to copy another existing site? http://flavors.me http://flavors.me
- aditya 16y agoOr, because of their ability to copy another existing site, and having the business savvy and relationships to sell it for a huge sum. Having a successful startup is a lot more than the tech behind it or the product itself, right? I mean, you should know, considering Digg never returned money to its investors. (joke!)
- benatkin 16y agoTo expand on your joke, the ability to generate buzz on the twittersphere. http://tweetreach.com/reach?q=aboutme http://tweetreach.com/reach?q=aboutme The last 50 tweets alone (at the time I submitted the form) reached 275,244 people! (Well, could have, if everyone read every tweet in their friends_timeline).
- abstractbill 16y agoOr, because of their ability to ... sell it for a huge sum. Wait, so the founding team is worth a lot because of their ability to sell themselves? Sounds like rather circular reasoning.
- kareemm 16y agosell themselves and "sell" their product (to 400k users) in exchange for time and attention. as the GP suggests, startups are about a lot more than tech - selling, it turns out, is also valuable.
- harscoat 16y agoTrue. But when you see how much fun they have at the end of the video, you may also want, one day, to belong to that "I've been acquired/I IPOed" group.
- staunch 16y agoThe full quote is "The size of the acquisition isn’t being disclosed but our guess is it’s in the tens of millions of dollars." The only thing separating this from crazy and smart is the price, so I think it's important to keep in mind that we don't know the price.
- joshu 16y agoTechcrunch always guesses that price. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it.
- citricsquid 16y agoI doubt most of those 400k users ever intend on using it. Being an "early adopter" is such a hip and happening thing to be people sign up to new services just to secure a cool sign up date and name now. I have an account with about.me only because I got my first name... I have no intention of ever using it unless it becomes big and worth while.
- MichaelApproved 16y agoHow many people also got different variations of their name?
- tim_iles 16y agoI reserved my regular handle but never returned to set up my page.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- citricsquid 16y agoI think you have your math wrong there by quite a lot. It's $50, not $50,000!
- MichaelApproved 16y ago000 != 0? Thanks for the catch. I'm deleting the original.
- kmfrk 16y agoFirst of all, the 400k is a number, not a metric. Techcrunch only mentions it to create a polite segue to their skepticism. Bear in mind that the number of users is particularly useless, because about.me is an vanity URL-based service. People stampede to reserve a /<firstname> domain. This is also the case for Twitter, Tumblr, and the Facebook vanity URL, or whatever they call it.
- ashchristopher 16y agoBefore I read the article, I was thinking talent acquisition... now... I don't know what to make of it. Sensationalism perhaps?
- thewordpainter 16y agohow much of the acquisition was driven from a talent acquisition standpoint? with his track record, i'm assuming tony conrad had recruited a stellar cast of characters to bring about.me to life.