Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has taken a 40 percent stake in WeddingWire, investing an undisclosed amount into the company.
WeddingWire is a combined listings site for services (like photography and cake-making) and organization tool. It also has social and community features, and other tools for planning and sharing information.
The deal is notable because MSLO has been expanding its presence online in a number of verticals, both through building its own properties and, increasingly, making investments in startups. The company also hired a Yahoo sales executive last year.
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Deal RoundUp: Feb 21, 2008 : unitedBIT said:
[...] Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., has taken a 40% stake in WeddingWire, for an undisclosed amount. This equity was combined with a commercial agreement related to software and content licensing, as well as media sales. The purpose of WeddingWire, founded in 2006, is to provide a localized search tool in order to find venues for the big day. Florists, bakeries, etc. For venues, listing in their directory is free, but provides another outlet for gaining visibility. One downside to relying on venues to list with the service is the limitation factor in getting the site populated for optimized search results. But the WeddingWire seems to have a good amount of content already present on the site. In addition to the search factor, WeddingWire is also for organizing the event itself. There’s planning tools the help you stay within your budget, create a wedding website, manage guest lists and seating charts. This is the technology that will likely be used across other MSLO sites, for a variety of purposes. While the search engine is still somewhat basic and operates much like a directory, WeddingWire also has a social network so users can discuss items with each other, and do all the other things that one would do within a niche social network. Source:Mashable! or coverage of VentureBeat [...]