CNET to Buy TechCrunch Why Not

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CNET To Buy TechCrunch -- Why Not?

By: Mathew Ingram
2007-10-03

Boy, Henry I used to be a famous Wall Street analyst Blodget is sure on a roll " or make that a troll. Today hes got a post about how...

...TechCrunch could be bought by CNET for $100-million or so. His post is actually a response to one by Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall Street, in which Doug hypothesizes about blog networks such as TechCrunch and Huffington Post and GigaOm and how much they might be worth to existing media entities.

Mike has a sarcastic response to Henrys post here. And theres no question that $100-million seems like a fairy tale price " a lot like Henrys $2,000 Google post from yesterday. Still, the idea itself makes sense. TechCrunch or GigaOm would fit as a part of CNET or several other media entities I can think of. The ironic thing is that selling would probably be a mistake, because at the moment they are doing far better than most of the companies that would be thinking about buying them.

Update:

Is $100-million nonsensical or not? Lets look at the numbers: TechCrunch says it has 1.5 million unique visitors a month " although a commenter below says those numbers may be high " and CNET Networks has about 10 million a month, according to comScore (Compete says about 6 million a month). But as we all know, its about more than just uniques, right? Its about monetization.

CNET had revenue last year of almost $400-million, although it only made a profit of $7-million, which is pretty pathetic. No one except Mike knows what TechCrunch made last year.

Still, CNETs market cap is $1.2-billion. If you assume that someone could monetize Mikes 1.5 million unique visitors better than CNET can monetize its uniques (which wouldnt be a stretch) then you could easily come to the conclusion that TechCrunch is worth about 20 per cent of what CNET is worth " or about $250-million.

Im not saying it is, Im just saying $100-million doesnt look all that crazy.

Comments

Tag: CNET, TechCrunch

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About the Author:
Mathew Ingram is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.


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