eBaumsWorld.com Acquired for $17.5 million!
HandHeld Entertainment has acquired eBaumsWorld.com for $17.5 million! eBaumsworld.com is one known as being on of the first and largest entertainment sites online. At it’s prime the entertainment site ranked within the Top 500 sites, based on Alexa ranking. Due to mass competition in the video and entertainment space, eBaumsworld.com has lost a lot of it’s traffic due to new 2.0 sites like break.com, metacafe.com and youtube. Below is an Alexa traffic chart for ebaumsworld.com over the past few years.
EbaumsWorld.com’s page views have steadily decreased as more 2.0 sites go live.
According to Wikipedia, ebaumsworld.com is: eBaum’s World (subtitled “Media for the masses”) is a popular website based in Rochester, New York featuring media such as videos, Flash cartoons and web games. It is highly controversial for many reasons, primarily due to the fact that content on the website is taken from other sources without permission and rebranded with the eBaum’s World logo. The site, which is owned by Eric “eBaum” Bauman, a native of Rochester, New York, ranks in the top 2000 sites on the Internet according to the website Alexa. It is co-owned by Eric’s secretary and father, Neil Bauman.
The purchase of eBaumsWorld.com is just one of many from Handheld Entertainment. Let’s take a look at some of their previous acquisitions:
November 14, 2006
– HandHeld Entertainment Acquires Dorks.com, a Fast-Growing Web Site Full of Hilarious Videos Attracting Up To 1 Million Unique Visitors per Month. $1.5 Million.
December 1, 2006
– HandHeld Entertainment Increases Position in the User-Generated Humorous Videos Marketplace by Acquiring FunMansion.com for $1.1 Million
December 18, 2006
– HandHeld Entertainment Acquires YourDailyMedia.com for $1.06 Million; HandHeld’s Network of Web Sites Now Attracts as Many as 5 Million Unique Visitors Per Month
February 6, 2007
– HandHeld Entertainment Acquires Putfile.com and Increases Audience to More Than 13.7 Million Unique Visitors and 83 Million Page Views. $7.1 Million
March 27, 2007
– HandHeld Entertainment Expands European Presence with Acquisition of UnOriginal.co.uk. $500,000
April 24, 2007
– HandHeld Entertainment Continues to Expand its European Presence with the Acquisition of Holylemon.com. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
August 2, 2007
– HandHeld Entertainment to Acquire eBaum’s World, a Premier Online Entertainment Site. $17.5 Million
As you can see from Handheld Entertainment’s acquisitions, they are quite serious… buying up almost all sites that rank on the first page of Google for “funny videos“. Now let’s take a look at Handheld Entertainment’s stock situation. (Symbol: ZVUE).
The chart below represents ZVUE stock over the past year. The huge jump in the stock price during November was a direct result of the news of their first purchase of Dorks.com… since then the stock has been absolutely horrendous. I was unlucky enough to jump in and follow this stock at the time of it’s rocketing from $1 to $7 per share… and now almost back to where it originally started. I have been buying on the dips, which seem to be continuous. However, with their recent purchases, they are always a possible buyout target and have a very powerful network of entertainment sites at the moment. What is even more interesting is that nearly all of Handheld Entertainment’s acquisitions were a cash and stock bundle package. With such fluctuations in their stock price, these multi-million dollar deals have potentially changed from being worth millions to much smaller figure deals in the long run. (Vice versa if we should see this stock rocket once again.)
Is ZVUE now a deal at these super low prices, or still a crappy stock with no legs?
HandHeld Entertainment’s network of Web sites (eBaumsWorld.comâ„¢, Putfile.comâ„¢, Holylemon.comâ„¢, UnOriginal.co.ukâ„¢, YourDailyMedia.comâ„¢, Dorks.comâ„¢, FunMansion.comâ„¢ and ZVUE.comâ„¢) now houses more than 850,000 user-generated and commercial videos available for purchase or free viewing, as well as millions of free user-submitted photos and other media, and is expected to deliver nearly one billion page views/video streams in 2007. Keep an eye on ZVUE stock and all future mergers on this company, as they may soon become a big player or potential take over target.
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