I must admit to being a little perplexed as to why Yahoo decided it needed to acquire Bix, a company that provides online karaoke and contests.
The company does have 1 million users and has gotten to that size by offering contests with prizes worth as much as $50,000. But online karaoke?
I suspect this deal is as much about the people, as it is about the intellectual property. Here’s what TechCrunch has to say about the founder of Bix.
[CEO Mike] Speiser was previously the founder of Epinions…Yahoo! got a seasoned social media man to put in charge of a number of product management at the company’s most social products.
The fact that the terms of the deal were not disclosed, but likely less than $15 million, it’s highly likely this was a human capital driven deal.
Anyone using Bix? Am I just too old and out of touch? Anyone want to share their karaoke video?
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8 comments on “Yahoo Buys Contest Site Bix, But Why?”
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Marshall Kirkpatrick Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Hey now, I’m not posting my karaoke videos until you post yours!
Andy Beal Says:
November 17th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Hah! Maybe that’s our next contest!
Dave White Says:
November 18th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Well you never know what these major search engines are planning to do by acquiring various sites, especially sites that generate more traffic.
Managed dedicated server Says:
November 18th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Well i am not sure what exacly are their plans with that. I guess they are following the footsteps of google now. They needed a change for sure from the routine.
Andy Beal Says:
November 18th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I guess Yahoo knows what they are doing. I sure can’t tell from here.
InteractiveBiz Says:
November 20th, 2006 at 6:09 am
[...] Pas mal de news dernièrement et de rumeurs sur des rachats de start-ups par Yahoo. Henri se faisait l’écho d’une rumeur annoncée puis démentie par Techcrunch concernant MyBlogLog. En même temps ou presque annonce du rachat de Bix qui a attiré mon attention puisqu’il s’agit d’un site de concours (contest) en ligne. On est pas loin du défi. Bref. A ce sujet, la question était “Pourquoi Yahoo rachète Bix ? C’est quoi l’idée?” [...]
InteractiveBiz » Yahoo étale sa confiture… Says:
November 20th, 2006 at 6:11 am
[...] Pas mal de news dernièrement et de rumeurs sur des rachats de start-ups par Yahoo. Henri se faisait l’écho d’une rumeur annoncée puis démentie par Techcrunch concernant MyBlogLog. En même temps ou presque annonce du rachat de Bix qui a attiré mon attention puisqu’il s’agit d’un site de concours (contest) en ligne. On est pas loin du défi. Bref. A ce sujet, la question était “Pourquoi Yahoo rachète Bix ? C’est quoi l’idée?” [...]
Andrew Chen Says:
November 28th, 2006 at 1:36 am
I have a pretty good sense of why they did the acquisition, for a number of reasons. Basically one hot area in brand advertising (where Yahoo makes a ton of money, and Google does not) is the idea of “brand integration” – i.e., having microsites and feautres within the portal where people participate in sponsored advertising.
So it’s very clear to me that Bix is a great platform for Yahoo to run contests with their community, and leverage their advertising relationships to create more brand ad inventory for their network. That way, they can give users something fun while making it very easy to monetize. Think of contests like, “Sing a song about your car” and other ad-friendly concepts.