Demand Media Plucks Pluck
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Company buys social networking and blog syndication provider.
Domain name company Demand Media, which owns registrar eNom, has purchased Pluck for an undisclosed price. A source to Reuters put the price tag at $50 million to $60 million.
Pluck, based in Austin, Texas, was founded as basically an RSS reader and has evolved since then. It now bills itself as a social media company that delivers “1 billion social media interactions” every month. The company offers a social media platform as well as a blog syndication network called BlogBurst.
Demand Media, founded by former MySpace Chairman Richard Rosenblatt, has raised over $300 million in capital. It owns a large portfolio of names as well as domain registrar eNom (which purchase BulkRegister). It also has a marketing agreement with VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) to promote the .tv domain.
I’ve read that the company is throwing off lots of cash, but I still wonder if it will be able to apply social media across a large number of domains. Rosenblatt had hoped to take the company public in 2007, but that appears to be on hold.
