Webshots Sold For $45 Million

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Webshots Sold For $45 Million

Three years ago it was bought for $70 Million

engine

3:26 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

Internet media company and tech news hub CNet Networks Inc. has announced the sale of its photo-sharing site Webshots. Ownership of the lagging site is slated to got to American Greetings Corp., who shelled out $45 million to take it off CNet's hands. Here's the juicy part though -- CNet bought the site for $70 million just three years ago.

Webshots Bought for $70 Million, Sold For $45 Million [blog.wired.com]

SEOMike

3:47 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

ouch.

sem4u

3:53 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

Yes that's going to hurt. I do like Webshots though and have been using them for years to put my photos online.

rj87uk

5:27 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

I spend too much time on the internet and I had no idea about "webshots" are they big?

rogerd

6:44 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

Seems to be kind of a "reverse Midas touch" at CNET. I wonder what they could get for MySimon now that they have been its stewards for a while? (Paid $736 million in 2000.)

superpower

7:29 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

That's interesting.

Oops, just edited my post, I was missing one chain in the link.

This thing gets bought and resold a lot!

[edited by: superpower at 7:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 26, 2007]

walkman

7:30 pm on Oct 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

not that bad if they paid with their stock--provided their stock was as inflated as the prices of teir targets.

JS_Harris

10:18 am on Oct 27, 2007 (gmt 0)

Photo hosting is no longer an extremely hot commodity, it's merely "hot" now and isn't headed in the right direction to stake a companies future on. Good move. Videos are next.

BananaFish

11:52 pm on Oct 27, 2007 (gmt 0)

Just when you thought the dot com bust was over. When is the web 2.0 bust coming? Maybe after a few more companies spend this kind of money on Internet pyrite?

graeme_p

6:07 am on Oct 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

If the Alexa numbers are accurate, Webshots has a fraction of the traffic it did three years ago. The comments in the 2006 annual report make it clear it is a declining business as well.

Cnet are probably lucky to offload it at that price given its performance. They do not disclose numbers ofr it separately, but I would guess they got a decent multiple for a declining business.