Speculation: MetaCafe & Yahoo?
This past Friday the buzz was a low humming about speculations of a MetaCafe acquisition. At the time there was speculation of two possible suitors, Yahoo! and a conglomerate of networks.
Well the buzzing has returned, this time with just Yahoo! at the helm of the acquisition speculation. TechCrunch earlier reported that the talks had pretty much stalled based on MetaCafe's recent traffic reports. However, Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee is now reporting that isn't true and that talks are still ongoing - just not at the rapid pace that was once thought.
About those traffic reports - apparently there's conflicting data. TechCrunch sites comScore numbers that reflect a drop in traffic. NewTeeVee is citing both Alexa and Hitwise that reflect differently, showing a slight drop in October of this year and then a jump in November. The graph they refer to is Hitwise's data, thankfully. Most Search Marketers by now know just how unreliable Alexa data can be.
Yahoo!'s name seems to be the front runner now. This would make complete sense, and a great addition to their stable of social networking. I just ponder how this would work with their newest acquisition JumpCut? Regardless the next couple of days should be interesting ones to see how this all develops.
Metacafe is a really good web site, their idea to pay the video producers directly may not be unique but they are probably the first to implement it into motion. There are other great web sites such as Motiono, they do not pay video producers as of yet however metacafe does.
Posted by: Motiono | July 04, 2007 at 07:20 PM