InfoSpace sells SiliconInvestor.com
Former employee of bulletin board takes control
By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 3:15 PM ET May 21, 2003
BELLEVUE, Wash. (CBS.MW) - InfoSpace on Wednesday confirmed that it sold its SiliconInvestor.com Web site to a former employee of the online bulletin board service for an undisclosed amount
Bob Zumbrunnen, a former Web site administrator for SiliconInvestor.com, is now running the Web site with three employees out of his office in Freeman, Mo.
Zumbrunnen also runs a competing bulletin board service, Investors Hub. He plans to operate the two as separate businesses, although the sites will soon offer some of the same technical features.
He declined to specify the purchase price, but said that he had been negotiating for several months for SiliconInvestor.com before finally taking control of it last Friday.
"I can't say if it was making money for InfoSpace, but I do expect it to make money for me," said Zumbrunnen.
Zumbrunnen worked at SiliconInvestor until February, 2001, when he was laid off along with about 250 people. In early 2002, he took over operations of Investors Hub.
He said the two sites will soon have combined traffic of about 2 million page views per day.
Despite the slack interest in the stock market among individual stock market investors that used to flock to such Web sites, Zumbrunnen said he can turn a profit at SiliconInvestor within a few months.
"The Web site is not going be a no-brainer money maker any time soon, but it will survive to see another bull market and then I can reap the benefits of that," he said.
InfoSpace (INSP: news, chart, profile) had assumed ownership of SiliconInvestor as part of its Oct. 12, 2000 purchase of Go2Net.
InfoSpace spokesman Adam Whinston said the sale of SiliconInvestor is part of an effort by InfoSpace to focus on its core payment processing, search, directory and wireless businesses. |
