M&A News: AOL acquires Weblogs Inc - Wondir bought by Steve Case's latest business enterprise

Crazy! Rafat Ali just pinged me pointing to a breaking news (actually breaking leak): AOL has reportedly acquired Weblogs Inc. The deal should be confirmed this week, accorning to this piece. Congrats to Rafat for the exclusive, of which I extracted this snipet:

[…] The company's blogs have had an exponential trajectory, with sites like Engadget, Autoblog, BloggingBaby, and others. In total, the company has about 130 bloggers, with about 15 full time employees, from what I know.
AOL intends to keep the company/blogs separate from its site, much in the vein of what is happening with other blog and Web 2.0 companies being bought. But this is perhaps the first pure content-related company being bought out in the blog/ Web 2.0 space...or at least of this scale.
For AOL, this is head first into the blog media revolution, so to speak
Calacanis, who was at the We Media conference today where I was, refused comment; I did spot him with an AOL tote bag.
Staci adds: How much will Weblogs Inc. cost AOL? One estimate I heard today was roughly $20 million as an earn-out -- to get it all, Weblogs Inc. would have to meet certain goals. But I've also heard talk of Flickr-like numbers, which would make it closer to $30-35 million range. Certainly to Weblogs' execs advantage to have people thinking towards the higher end. Weblogs Inc. revenues are running at $1 million-plus annually from Google AdSense alone, according to numbers jubilantly released by Calacanis on his own blog; during a panel last week he said the company was bringing in $2 million a year. With that in mind, either of those numbers would be a generous multiple.  […]

Congratulations to Jason and team!

Update: More information became available about the deal overnight, including the official press release. The Reuters piece is here (including an attribution of the break to Rafat), and states $25M as the price. Another number ($40M-ish) was floating around Web2.0 last night, which might include the acquisition price and an earn-out. Not shabby for a company launched two years ago around a brand new concept and business model.

Checking out the blog coverage, I found this piece from Darren Howse who has some insider Weblogs Inc infos:

• WIN are selling to increase the resources that they couldn’t provide otherwise (offices, technology, people, infrastructure) as well as extra traffic.
• AOL are moving to an ad based model which fits with WIN.
• Nothing is changing - Brian, Jason and the same management will continue to run WIN as an independently operated AOL company
• WIN headlines will start appearing on AOL home page, netscape, AIM etc
• Bloggers will need to sign a new contract shortly
• The new contract will allow bloggers to own their own content for offline use
• The contract will contain other features yet to be announced that are favorable to bloggers
• Blogging will continue as per usual
• There is no increase in pay mentioned but allusions to more money in the network due to the deal
• There is mention of AOL getting into video content and WIN playing a part in this

Want to track the reactions of the blogosphere: check out this Memeorandum view.

Almost at the same time, Allen Searls just told me that Wondir, the live Q&A company I wrote about a few time, has been acquired by a new healthcare startup, Revolution Healthcare Group, built by Steve Case through a number of roll-ups. The full press release is here:

Just 100 days after its launch, Revolution Health Group (RHG) announced that it had completed the acquisition of six start-up health companies, made an investment in a seventh company, and hired its senior management team. This puts the company ahead of schedule in its drive to build the leading, comprehensive consumer-driven health company, and to bring its first major offerings to consumers in 2006. […]

RHG will launch a consumer-friendly health portal in 2006 ( http://www.revolutionhealth.com ). The website will be a leading tool for consumers as they manage their health needs and the health needs of their families.

To that end, RHG has acquired four companies that will provide key elements for the RHG portal: MyDNA Media, which offers health news and information; 1-800-Schedule, which helps consumers find doctors and schedule appointments with health care providers; Simo Software, Inc., which has created software that allows consumers to manage their health care spending, records and finances; and Wondir, Inc., which provides a community-based search for information about health needs and issues.

Congratulations to Allen and Matt Koll.

Comments

[Nick]

why are they looking at those marginal folks instead of chasing a really big oppoprtunity, like, Quintura http://www.quintura.com
they they will be really independent on google