Peter M. Zollman
Peter Newton joins Gatehouse in new post
Peter Newton, who’s had a long and varied career involving newspapers, dot-coms and independent businesses, has joined GateHouse Media as president of GateHouse Ventures, a new position.
The company also shifted Jay Fogarty to VP of strategy and innovation from VP of new revenue platforms.
“We are very excited to announce … Peter’s appointment [which] comes as we are moving from a successful diligence phase in some of our new ventures to an execution phase, a period in which we begin to scale our new businesses,” said Kirk Davis, GateHouse COO.
Newton spent 17 years at The Boston Globe, including finance and advertising positions. He was president of BostonWorks, the Globe’s print-and-online recruitment program before the paper became a Monster.com affiliate. Newton later joined Monster.com, serving as SVP and GM of small and mid-sized businesses and heading Monster Media Alliance, which grew to more than 350 affiliates. He also worked as VP for bizdev at Helium.com, a content farm, and ran his own consultancy, Big Rock Consulting Group, for about two years.
The announcement is here.
Who’s gonna buy Monster Worldwide? Cheesman says … no one!
Joel Cheesman, formerly known as Cheezhead, is one of our favorite observers of the recruitment scene (along with John Zappe of ERE and formerly CIR). He’s just restarted a regular blog; you can sign up at bit.ly/notsfw. Here’s the latest installment, about the potential sale of Monster Worldwide including Monster.com. We may disagree — actually, we do — but this is an interesting viewpoint.
Wall Street was buzzing last week on rumors that LinkedIn (LNKD) was in talks to acquire Monster (MWW). According to a Reuters story, LinkedIn Corp and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners are among a number of parties that have expressed interest in a potential deal for Monster Worldwide Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, as the Internet jobs-search company is preparing data for potential buyers.
The stock shot up on the hype. However, Business Insider and a few others quickly squashed the report as bunk, accusing Monster of desperately trying to stir-up interest.
The thought of a high-growth business like LinkedIn strapping on an albatross like Monster is a bit ridiculous if you think about it for a second. So who, one like me must ask, would buy Monster?
As far as I can tell, the answer is: No one.
Yeah, nobody. John Doe. The invisible man.
Look: Facebook’s IPO is coming up, and analysts are crying about “decelerated growth” and staying the company doesn’t deserve its current valuation. So, knowing growth is what drives the markets, then you have to ask where Monster’s growth catalyst is? 6Sense? SeeMore? BeKnown? Be serious.
Aside from a massive hiring Renaissance, I don’t see any significant growth on the horizon. And certainly nothing to get a buyer all hot-and-bothered.
That said, if a buyer does come out of the woodwork, it’s likely to have Asian roots, hoping to get a foothold in the U.S. and other markets Monster serves. 51Job perhaps? With a market cap greater than Monster’s, it’s possible. Seek.com.au out of Australia perhaps? Nah. Someone out of Europe? It’s kind of a mess there at the moment, in case you didn’t get the memo.
Time will obviously tell. This year’s presidential election will be interesting for business. But methinks there will be no savior riding into to town on a white Trumpasaurus.
Facebook testing classified upsells
The “freemium” business model is now the growing global default for classified ad business models — where the ad is free but the advertiser can pay a small fee for highlighting it, promoting it, extending it or otherwise making it more prominent.
Enter Facebook.
Just a few days before its initial public offering, Facebook is testing a freemium model for classifieds and other “highlighted posts.”
(We learned about it from Mashable.com, which in turn learned about it from the New Zealand blog “Stuff.” We haven’t yet had a chance to get confirmation from Facebook or follow up. We’ll do that next week, but Facebook is in a “quiet period” under securities laws and we don’t know whether they’ll talk at all.)
Facebook told Mashable “highlighted posts” is in a limited test, with prices ranging from nothing to “a couple of bucks. Two examples of potential “highlight” users the company gave were someone selling a car, or a band promoting an appearance. Mashable said highlighted posts could make Facebook a competitor to Craigslist. (Well, isn’t just about everybody?)
The Mashable piece includes a screenshot of one example of a purchase screen.
Monetize, monetize, monetize. We hate the word, but it’s something Facebook had better be doing. Because once it goes public, the pressure for increased revenue will be relentless.
CareerBuilder exec joins corporate boards
Brent Rasmussen of CareerBuilder is going to be one busy guy. In addition to his responsibilities as president for North America at the recruitment site, he’s joined two corporate boards in the past month.
Rasmussen is now on the board of Central Desktop, a collaboration and file-sharing site, and Balihoo, “the premier provider of local marketing automation technology and services.”
“Central Desktop has made amazing strides in collaboration. The company’s SocialBridge online collaboration platform squarely addresses the challenges that creative agencies and marketing teams face daily in their operations by providing solutions to project collaboration needs that have not been effectively met by other offerings in the marketplace,” he said.
As for Balihoo, he said it’s “changing the way companies go to market and connect with consumers. … It’s exciting to serve on the board of a fast-growing company that is redefining local marketing for national brands.”
Both companies are privately held. Balihoo has received more than $17.5 in venture, angel and seed funding.
Rasmussen has been with CareerBuilder for more than 10 years, and has served as SVP of sales and COO before becoming president for North America. He’s considered an expert on employment who speaks regularly at conferences and appears frequently on television business programs. He’s also president of CB Cares, an internal group at CareerBuilder that supports educational mentoring and charitable fundraising.
Before joining CareerBuilder, he spent nine years at Xerox Corp. He’s got an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Avito.ru wins $75 million investment
Four investors, including Moscow-based Baring Vostok and U.S.-based Accel Partners, have poured $75 million into Avito.ru, a Russian free-classified site that competes directly with Slando.com and other regional and national classified sites.
Avito is a classic “freemium” business model
— it offers free classifieds to private-party advertisers and offers upsells for highlighted ads, improved visibility, etc. It also charges professional sellers for online stores.
The investment closed on Friday and was announced yesterday. Baring Vostok Capital Partners, which is a multibillion dollar private equity firm operating in Russia and the CIS, was joined by Silicon Valley-based Accel Partners, the largest single investor in Facebook, and Kinnevik and Northzone, which had previously invested in Avito.ru.
Sonali de Rycker of Accel told the Financial Times that Avito is generating reach outside major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“We are really looking to back the companies we think can be No. 1 in these giant categories, like classified, commerce and travel,” de Rycker told the FT. “Classified works well because of the urban concentration and lack of retail services in the regions. … We like the model because once you are number one it has a snowball effect – it’s really a winner-takes-all market.”
It won’t necessarily be easy for Avito: It’s competing directly with Naspers-owned Slando.com
, an Craigslist / EBay-ish knockoff that Naspers’ MIH bought in June 2011 from founders Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall (80 percent) and EBay (20 percent). Naspers owns a number of major classifieds brands worldwide, including OLX and Kalahariads. It has recently been consolidating and strengthening its position in Eastern Europe (clients-only post).
Avito.ru says about six million listings are posted on the site each month.
“To get to the point where the snowball is rolling down the hill, you need to invest,” CEO and cofounder Jonas Nordlander told The Moscow Times.
More coverage:
The Moscow Times
Bloomberg / Business Week
Zillow announces RentJuice acquisition
As we reported on Monday, Zillow has agreed to acquire RentJuice, a rental management software company for landlords, brokers and agents.
We were off a few bucks on the purchase price; Zillow is paying $40 million in cash. (We had heard $45 million. What’s a few bucks like that among friends?)
RentJuice has 31 employees and has been around since 2009. It’s the third acquisition by Zillow (Nasdaq: Z), after Postlets and Diverse Solutions.
- New Study Names Edmunds.com Most Popular Car Dealer Review Site
- HomeZada Integrates to Pinterest for DIY Projects
- Contact At Once! Dealer Chat Software Now Available to DealerRater Certified Dealer Partners
- United States:
- Vizu Moves into Social Media Ad Success Measurement
- McClatchy Names Elaine Lintecum As Vice President, Finance And Chief Financial Officer And Announces Other Leadership Changes
- United States:AutoTrader.com Announces New Leadership at VinSolutions
- Grenlist.com is a “Classifieds Community”, with environmental integrity! Every aspect of the site, has been created by the people, for the people!
- Canoe.ca publisher Quebecor reports Q1 2012 results
- Yellow Media Reports $3 Billion Quarterly Loss
