IAC, conglomerate of web properties, launching new "content venture"
update: rumors are beginning to spill out; Alley Insider suggests the venture is a collaboration between IAC’s Ask and Digg.com, and will launch “very soon.”
With the bid by Microsoft to purchase Yahoo potentially reducing the number of major Web companies, other conglomerates may also come under pressure to sell or break up. IAC, the owner of sites such as Evite.com, Ask, Match.com, Citysearch and Excite, has seen its stock go nowhere despite several years of economic expansion, and has already announced it will spin off several divisions as part of a restructuring.
Yesterday, IAC posted this job position for a new general manager, saying it is “gearing up to launch an innovative, new content venture,” as part of its effort to identify “new business opportunities and incubating new concepts.” Any ideas what this venture will be?
It comes at a time when John Malone, of Liberty Media, a major shareholder, is in a public spat with IAC’s Barry Diller, and wants to bring in Liberty’s Greg Maffei to run the place.
Graph above is from Google Finance.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
