on the side | shellen.com

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1. #  Doug Mehus 28/3/05 9:37 AM
   And now, just a week after Yahoo! bought Flickr and HP bought Snapfish, discount ISP United Online said it has purchased the assets of PhotoSite from Homestead Technologies for $10 million in cash. Presumably, this means they've bought its users, domain name, PhotoSite service mark, and related equipment (if any).
   
   UO, which is best known for NetZero and Juno, also purchased Classmates.com for an amount I can't recall ($125 million or something) and the assets of About Web Services last year for approximately $12.5 million cash and formed a new wholly-owned subsidiary called Mega Web Services, Inc. to house those assets. They include 50megs and FreeServers, among others. It also launched the emailMyName.us service.
   
   A link to the announcement is here, on UO's press release distributor, PrimeZone Media. The release should be housed on the company Web site archives shortly.
   
   I think companies are buying up these photo-sharing sites to build brand awareness and user loyalty, despite the lack of a profitable business model. It does make sense, since they're making money in other ways and can simply subsidize these services with their profitable ventures.
   
   Cheers,
   Doug

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