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.

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 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

Unquote.com

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.

Here’s the release.

The move he’s talking about is the news that U.K. based Evenbase, and in particular its New Ventures division (described by Potts to CIR as “our new ‘super secret’ division”) has just bought the Italian Jobrapido – one of the largest job search engines in the world. Evenbase claims this catapults them into “the top 5 digital recruitment brands in the world” with Potts describing Jobrapido as “the world’s second largest jobs aggregator”. By his estimation that brings more than 660 million annual visits across 50 countries under the Evenbase umbrella.

The acquisition comes at a cost of €30 million with the intention of keeping the Jobrapido team in situ in Milan and keeping founder and CEO Vito Lomele on board within Evenbase within the New Ventures division and under the control of its MD Ray Duggins. DMGT, parent group of Evenbase has an excellent track record for keeping and encouraging the entrepreneurs it buys into so Lomele will find himself in like-minded company.

Jobrapido was founded by Lomele in 2006 and in just six years went from startup mode to revenues of achieved revenues of €24 million and profits of €6 million during calendar year 2011. Its acquisition underlines the reasoning behind the metamorphosis of the Jobsite Group into its new incarnation as Evenbase and with it the move from a largely U.K. company working with international partnerships to a fully fledged global player.

Perhaps most significant of all is Potts assertion that; “the Jobrapido acquisition is just our first step on this path.” When he talked to CIR earlier this year he made it clear that 2012 was going to be a milestone year for the group. The evidence suggests that he intends to deliver on that.

Evenbase (previously the Jobsite group of companies) has a strong background in software development courtesy of Broadbean, the multi-posting software specialist it owns. Now it is launching a new white label solution with the intriguing promise that not only is it entirely customisable, and free to set up and use but backed by the Jobsite name and network since jobs posted to your site are visible across the Jobsite network.

Talking to CIR Cheryl Morgan, Jobsite’s Brand and Communications Manager explains the reasoning behind the launch in terms of expanding the company;

“JobsiteWhite delivers both revenue and partnership opportunities – two key objectives for the recently launched Evenbase. It also responds to a need in the market as Jobsite have had many approaches from smaller organisations who want to add a job board to their site but aren’t operating on the scale that suits the bespoke solutions that Jobsite build for the likes of the National Health Service and Northcliffe.”

Morgan presents it as a win-win for both sides since it “complements & enhances sites within the Job Boards division of Evenbase through the jobs sharing element. It means a greater number of vacancies for candidates registered with Jobsite, especially in specialist niche markets, and it helps generate more quality applications for Jobsite clients.”

The revenue is set to come from JobsiteWhite partners selling vacancies rather than charging them a fee for the technology itself – a move that may cause ripples amongst some of the more established white label providers not least since Jobsite is pointedly using its reach to enhance the appeal. As Morgan puts it; “Jobs that are posted directly on the JobsiteWhite sites are also made available on Jobsite, and relevant sites in their network, which means access to more candidates and a greater chance of finding the right person for the job.”

Naturally it also helps Jobsite expand its reach into more niche areas by bringing recruiters to its door that might previously have considered the white label approach to be beyond their reach.

JobsiteWhite launches later this month

To encourage community growth, those who bring their own network connections into the BetterWeekdays fold are rewarded with a highlighted profile.

The mission of the site is to “raise the contributions of businesses to society by improving the effectiveness of its leaders.”

Chicago-based founder Chris Motley also founded and oversees The Founder Institute,  a technology startup accelerator and entrepreneur training program currently on pace to launch over 500 companies per year in over 13 cities worldwide. Read more about BetterWeekdays at Ere.Net.

Millstein, 52, has been active in a number of newspaper initiatives and partnerships, including the Newspaper Consortium; newspaper alliances with Monster.com; Find n Save, the shopping site created out of the Travidia business, and QuadrantOne, the display-ad exchange owned by Hearst and three other media companies.

Before joining Hearst in 2005, Millstein spent five years as EVP of New York Times Digital. He helped launch Boston.com in 1995. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter and editor at The Boston Globe and The Hartford (Conn.) Courant.

Hearst publishes 15 daily and 37 weekly newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, San Antonio (Texas) Express-News and Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union.

Here’s the news release.

It’s Dailylister, a site that lets you search across Craigslist markets around the U.S. We read about it first on Gizmodo, where Joe Brown called it “horrendously designed and completely addictive.” He said the site is “only about a year old … [and] might hold out for another year.”

We doubt it.

Craigslist has a history of shutting down sites that aggregate its results, search across multiple sites, provide new tools for accessing or posting to Craigslist. They’re violations of Craigslist’s terms of use, which, incidentally, were updated in February to be clearer but also more restrictive.

So far, Dailylister has gotten away with what it’s doing — using Google tools to search across Craigslist. It’s a neat idea, and pretty simple and creative. But now that Gizmodo shined the spotlight on it we suspect Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has the lawyers filling in the blanks on the “knock it off” letter even as we type.

In the meantime, if you want to search more than one Craigslist market, try Dailylister. While you can.

Manheim, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Cox Enterprises, yesterday announced the acquisition of Motors.co.uk from DMGT, the Daily Mail and General Trust plc. Motors.co.uk is No. 2 in the U.K. online automotive market. AutoTrader.co.uk is No. 1.

Cox owns AutoTrader.com in the U.S., which is unrelated to AutoTrader.co.uk.

AutoTrader.co.uk is owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax Partners, a private equity firm that also owns AutoTrader.ca, the leading Canadian auto site, and sites in South Africa (among others).

Got that?

We didn’t think so.

But essentially this means Cox / Manheim / AutoTrader.com, powerhouses in the U.S. market and the used-auto market in 18 countries, will be competing with another of the leading global auto advertising players, Apax.

We haven’t yet had a chance to talk to any of the companies involved, but we’re trying to talk to all of them within the next couple of days. (That material will be available to clients of Classified Intelligence Report; we sent this analysis to CIR clients yesterday as an “alert.”)

Meantime, a few bullet points:

—Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

— All Motors.co.uk employees will transfer to Manheim; “there are no immediate plans to change the day-to-day operation.”

— From the news release: Manheim CEO John Bailey: “We have been watching the online classified business here in the UK for some time and we’ve had a growing presence in this important market with our own sites All Approved Cars and, more recently, Carmony.

“In the USA Manheim is by far the market leader, owning the US Autotrader.com* which consistently lists over 2.7 million vehicles. In just five years Motors.co.uk has built up a substantial presence and great reputation in the UK and the opportunity to acquire them has come at a perfect time for us, as we look to expand our services in this space.”

Note the asterisk there; the company was at pains to point out that it’s unrelated to AutoTrader.co.uk.

—The acquisition included several related businesses.

—Manheim already had relationships with more than 3,000 UK auto dealers, or more than 60 percent of the UK franchise dealers.

Here’s a link to the news release.

The market leader in online recruiting in Switzerland Jobs.ch reports a positive past year with growing customer orders and audience numbers. According to the press release in 2011 jobs.ch AG had customer orders of CHF 55.6 million ($ 60.75 million U.S.), which represents an increase of 54 percent compared to the previous year.

The number of advertised positions increased about 27 per cent. In terms of audience Jobs.ch reports WEMF audited 29.2 million visits in 2011, a growth of 22 per cent compared to 2010.

After the stagnation years 2008 and 2009 with a downturn in of annual turnover and a loss of job ads, the company owned by the US VC company Tiger Global Investments Partners seems to have made the turnaround with investments and an expansive strategy. After the takeover of the Austrian online job board Karriere.at in 2010, last year´s takeover of the smaller executive job board Topjobs.ch from Switzerland´s largest online classified as market Scout24 Schweiz AG, certainly contributed to the growing costumer receipts.

A fact CEO Mark Sandmeier admits: “For us, 2011 was clearly characterized by strategic expansion and an extension of our offers for business customers and jobseekers. By taking over Topjobs and through close cooperation with Scout24, we managed once again to significantly improve the services for business customers.”

Scout24 Switzerland also handed over its contract costumer business of its platform jobscout24.ch to Jobs AG in February 2011, which now gives the company a leading position in the marketing of three job boards and five industry-specific job verticals. Also the collaboration with the German social business network XING since April 2011 increases the reach of the job ads on Jobs.ch.

Sandmeier announced for 2012 a stronger focus on international services, since many swiss companies have to look for specialists in other countries to fill their vacancies. He also announced that Jobs.ch AG will focus keenly on offering the best possible job search experience via smartphone and that company is developing new apps for iPads, Android devices and an app for all other smartphone platforms in the course of the year. The company reports that almost 10 per cent of all traffic on the jobs.ch comes from mobile internet use currently, especially from the iPhone app which was renewed in February. Currently there is no app for Google´s Android available.

The 2000 founded company currently operates from Zurich and Lausanne besides Jobs.ch several vertical sector platforms in the segments specialist staff and executives (topjobs.ch), finance and banking (jobs4finance.ch), ICT(ictcareer.ch), sales (jobs4sales.ch), engineering (ingjobs.ch) and healthcare (medtalents.ch).

The decline varies from sector to sector. In research, development, manufacturing and repair the number of jobs advertised online was 15 percent up on Febr. 2011. However, these gains were more than offset by a slump (-24 percent) in the number of public jobs advertised on job portals in France.

The statistic for Europe as a whole was so positive (+10 percent), mainly because of the strong German and U.K. job markets (+28 percent in Germany and +4 percent in the U.K. from Febr. 2011). In fact, France was not the only country in the EU to experience a drop in job ads in February. In the Netherlands (-10 percent), Belgium (-5 percent) and Sweden (-6 percent) the decline was even more pronounced in February.

The Monster Employment Index is calculated monthly for all EU countries (for the bigger markets detailed reports are released), by counting the number of jobs advertised on a representative number of job portals. Monster does not reveal, however, which job portals are counted, which has given rise to skepticism about the reliability and value of the monthly statistics in some quarters. Critics suggest, for instance, part-time jobs are included, which exaggerates the swings of the index with the ups and downs of the business cycle.

Inquiries by AIM at the calculators of the index in the Netherlands shed no light on the calculation methodology, including the portals included in the index.

The news release about Pearl’s appointment says she was on the founding team at Monster, and also worked for Intuit, BzzAgent, and CustomMade Ventures as chief product officer. She’ll be based at ZMags’ headquarters in Boston. The company works with retailers like Express, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sears and Office Depot and calls itself “the only rich media platform that brings commerce into the digital catalog.”

He was one of EBay’s “longest serving and most loyal employees, having served as a senior leader in EBay, PayPal and Skype over a 14-year period,” Donahoe said. Salvatierra, VP of customer advocacy and operational excellence, “performed with skill and unmatched dedication … with warmth, human patience and an unprecedented respect for those around him,” he added.

Read more here. Salvatierra, 39, left a wife and three children.

In a media statement 3Suisses said: “Given the current economic difficulties, we regret to have to announce the forthcoming cessation of activity on the site”.

Since Ebay is American, Leboncoin belongs to Norwegian firm Schibsted, and PriceMinister was bought by Japanese group Rakuten, the closure of 2Xmoinscher means that all the major C-to-C portals in France are now foreign-owned.