Teen Blog platforms: mature?

It’s only Tuesday and yet, 2 very big blogging platform have been put for sale : LiveJournal which has actually already been sold to SUP and Skyblog, the biggest European blogging platform/network. Correct me if I am wrong but these platforms are a lot comparable and I am sure that we could get some lessons from this.

First off, both networks are among the biggest (if not the biggest) on their markets. Estimates show that LiveJournal has around 14M accounts, aged 15-24 and with 2/3 of girls/women. Skyblog might have around 12M blogs, held mainly by teens or young adults : same audience and metrics. Both networks have also already changed ownership : Six Apart bought LiveJournal in 2005, while Skyblog (and its mother company, Skyrock) was acquired in early 2006 by a french private Equity firm. Since their last acquisition both platforms have grown exponentially!

Let’s now think about the meaning of this. There is a lot to bet that both platforms have grown less rapidly over the last few months… sellers will always try to keep an “exploding” division and sell it when it’s more mature. We might also think that monetization of the 15-20 audience is not very easy. Actually, Skyrock’s investors are probably trying to sell and they might need to “prepare the spouse” by selling less profitable assets. Rumors also say that Six Apart is in an IPO process, which would lead to the same strategy : improve profitability and get some cash to attract later investors with dividends perspectives.

Finally, it is the good time : I guess that both pitches are using comps from Facebook’s deal and forget to mention threats from the same Facebook, as well as new “blogging” trends : twitter, seesmic… Blogging is definitely not as attractive for teens that it used to be! What do you think?

Facebook & Microsoft

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Stef 11 months ago 1 point
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Small precision, it needs to be spelled Six Apart, and not SixAppart. Apart (hihi) from that, confidentiality requires me not to comment the LJ sale. However, when there's a seller, there's often a buyer, which indicates that this market is still attractive.

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julien 11 months ago 1 point
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Of course! There is always a buyer... and in the LJ case, it's also interesting to see that the buyer is actually in a country fro which the growth in teen blogging platforms outperforms the US one!
And finally, a mature market IS attractive : it just requires different management strategies and choices than a fast-growing market!

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ralphy 6 months ago 1 point
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You're right: this is the right moment to sell those platforms. If I were a video games publisher, I would study that kind of acquisition in order to create a video games community for my own games, especially for online video games, both causual Flash games and time-consuming MMOs. Youg people can spend a couple bucks a month to play "my little tiny rabbit", "i wanna be a superstar" or other "the sims online". The only requirement is to make all financial transactions made possible using cell phones and other young-people related cash solutions.

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julien 6 months ago 1 point
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Ralphy : thereare definetely plenty of synergies between ten platforms and casual gaming sites...

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