WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ: WEBM) has sold Internet.com to QuinStreet Inc. for $18 million in an all-cash deal. The sale is not just for the domain name but also includes the website behind it and all of its assets. WebMediaBrands still owns the popular MediaBistro.com, JustTechJobs.com and Graphics.com, which it will continue to operate.
Internet.com was a highly popular tech news website in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but it has lost some popularity over the years. The logo still looks familiar to me, though I can’t recall having visited Internet.com in ages. Another generic domain, InternetNews.com, seems to belong to Internet.com. I’m not sure if that site is included in the deal, but I would assume so given the similar logo and integration into Internet.com.
Digging through my domain news archive, I found a NY Times article reporting that WebMediaBrands originally acquired the domain for more than $100,000 from a web design company in May 1997. The owner of the web design firm also owned other generic premium domains including Finance.com, Risks.com and Breakfast.com, all of which he registered in the early 1990s when most premium domains were still freely available. Apparently, he later sold these as well.
When it bought the Internet.com domain name, WebMediaBrands still went by the name JupiterMedia (the company changed its name in 2009 following the sale of JupiterImages to Getty Images). By the way, this was not the first name change of the company: Founded by Alan Marshall Meckler in 1971, it was first named MecklerMedia. When sold to the larger Penton Media in 1998, the company’s growing Internet business was re-named and spun off into Internet.com Corp. After the burst of the DotCom Bubble in 2001, it became INT Media before becoming JupiterMedia in 2002 and, finally, WebMediaBrands in 2009.
Compete.com says Internet.com receives around 350,000 US visitors per month, and InternetNews.com receives another 150,000 visitors. The company’s MediaBistro.com web service is bigger, receiving between 800,000 and 1 million monthly visitors. The cash from the sale of Internet.com will make WebMediaBrands more liquid, improve its balance sheet and allow for the concentration on its bigger websites and the tradeshows it also operates.
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Actually it’s a division with dozens of busy sites and reported revenue of $14 million a year, so the Internet.com domain is a VERY small part of the overall deal. More info here…
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meckler-selling-internet.com-business-to-quinstreet-for-18m-exiting-tec/
Edwin, thanks for your comment. I’m aware of that. If you read my article again, I wrote:
“The sale is not just for the domain name but also includes the website behind it and all of its assets.”
I also mentioned InternetNews.com being part of the deal. But thanks for the link and clarification.