JUST YOUR TYPE?
Well, Yahoo! is the first of the GYMAAAE companies getting a little closer with Six Apart, one of the biggest PRIVATE companies in the blog hosting, software and services business. As this Reuters story explains it:
"Yahoo Inc. and Six Apart Ltd., creator of Movable Type -- the most popular software used to create professional blogs -- said on Sunday Yahoo will be the preferred supplier of Movable Type for small businesses.
The partnership is the latest in a string of deals by the world's largest Internet media company as it seeks to embrace so-called "social media," the new generation of Web sites that encourage Internet users to share written text, photos and videos."
It follows on the heels of Yahoo!'s acquisition of Del.icio.us a few days ago. Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny is certainly excited about it, along with Dave Winer.
Given that Google acquired Six Apart's biggest competitor Blogger (aka Pyra Labs) a couple of years ago, it's only natural that Yahoo! turn to Six Apart for more commercial blogging products and services to supplement it's own Yahoo! 360 consumer blogging services on the commercial side.
In some ways, Six Apart could be viewed as the Web 2.0 version of GeoCities, the web-site hosting company from the Web 1.0 era, which Yahoo! acquired for over $4.5 billion back in the heady days of 1999. After all, today's Yahoo! Hosting services descends from that acquisition.
As I mentioned in my previous post titled "On What to Buy Next for Yahoo! after Del.icio.us" the discussion has already started to focus on what Web 2.0 acquisition Yahoo! may make next, including this list by the Wall Street Journal's Jeremy Wagstaff.
Of course, Six Apart would be a mite bigger than the names on Jeremy's list, and would even address one of the concerns expressed by TDavid in this post titled "Yahoo to make 360 Geek deals in 2006?":
"Unfortunately all these announcements — this one clearly more good news for Six Apart than anybody else — continue to have very little impact on YHOO stock. Maybe it’s because some of these moves have been of questionable worth like buying del.icio.us for undisclosed millions. Who outside the geek sectors (myself proudly included) have even heard about del.icio.us?
This is the news that concerns me most as a shareholder and the stuff that seems to get talked about the least. Can’t wait to read how Semel spins this one in the annual report. When is the Wall Street love going to kick in for Yahoo? They are making moves, they are clearly the most active of the GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) camps, so where is the stock love? When does that start kicking in?"
A Yahoo! acquisition of Six Apart, now that would something that Wall Street would sit up and notice, for better or for worse.
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