Webhostingtalk / Inet Interactive SOLD!

[drmike]

Deal done on January 16th.  Press announced then:

PENTON ACQUIRES iNET INTERACTIVE, A LEADING EVENT AND DIGITAL INFORMATION COMPANY SERVING THE CLOUD, HOSTING AND DATA CENTER SEGMENTS

 


Acquisition continues strategy of growing leading event and digital/data-anchored positions

Over 80% of Penton EBITDA now generated by high growth events and digital/data capabilities

New York, NY, January 16, 2014 – Penton, North America’s largest privately held professional information services company, announced today that it has acquired iNET Interactive, a leading event and digital information company that focuses on the booming Cloud, Hosting and Data Center segments of the technology sector. Industry sources expect these segments to experience annual growth of 25-30% in the years ahead.

“A core element of our strategy is creating scaled positions in advantaged sectors. This acquisition doubles our tech sector footprint, and does so in exceptionally fast growing segments. The acquisition of this high quality business allows us to take immediate advantage of the rapid growth being experienced in this segment,” said David Kieselstein, Penton CEO. “Moreover, we’ll be able to accelerate iNET’s growth as we leverage our excellent shared service growth capabilities. This is a proven model at Penton, and we’re excited to have found a perfect fit in iNET.”

EXCEPTIONAL ASSETS IN FAST GROWING CLOUD, HOSTING AND DATA CENTER SEGMENT

The acquisition adds outstanding event and digital assets to the Penton Technology portfolio, including:

Cloud and Hosting:
– The premier hosting tradeshow series (HostingCon), including events in the US, China, India and Asia
– The largest online hosting and cloud community (Web Hosting Talk) and leading blog (The WHIR)
– The largest directory of resources for web developers
– One of the largest database administrator communities with over 550,000 members

Data Centers
– The leading data center tradeshow series (Data Center World)
– The leading position in the Data Center content industry (Data Center Knowledge)
– The largest data center industry association (AFCOM) with over 40 chapters and 4,500 data center members worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 500

iNET also strengthens Penton’s fast growing marketing service business with access to data and insights from a combined 7.8 million highly targeted business and technology decision makers.

Full press release:  http://www.inetinteractive.com/blog/awards-and-recognition/penton-acquires-inet-interactive/

 

[Francisco]

Pinned threads are going to go up in price for sure.

Francisco

 

[AMDbuilder]

Well this should be interesting.

 

[William]

Maybe they finally replace some of the idiotic mods/admins...

 

[Hxxx]

old news...

 

[DomainBop]

Penton 1,200 employees, $364 million annual revenues, and it listed $841 million in assets and $1.13 billion in liabilities when it filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010.   TL;DR WHT will get even more corporate

Pinned threads are going to go up in price for sure.

They could always start charging people without paid memberships to post ads. 

 

[William]

More likely you have to get PREMIUM or CORPORATE membership to post ad threads.... not impossible but would probably also kill a lot of the userbase - We'll see.

I honestly  HAVE paid for both Corporate and Premium before, both are not worth it.

 

[MannDude]

iNet is more than just WHT, but I'd imagine WHT is the big part of it.

HotScripts, that MySQL forum I'm too lazy to look up, etc. Plus the whole HostingCon is ran by iNet. It's a pretty big operation.

WHT has changed hands a few times over the years so not all too surprising really.

 

[MannDude]

More likely you have to get PREMIUM or CORPORATE membership to post ad threads.... not impossible but would probably also kill a lot of the userbase - We'll see.

I honestly  HAVE paid for both Corporate and Premium before, both are not worth it.

Premium Memberships weren't too bad a few years ago. The chat thread in the premium section was always fun and pretty laid back. They'd tolerate us making fun of (to a degree) some of the posts and what not made on the regular forums and general dicking around. But it was a nice community then, just private.

 

[drmike]

I think iNet got out before the place fell down more.

I keep forecasting more destruction in the segment.  iNet should have seen the indications a long while ago. WHT being their flagship product has been on a slide for a long while.  Lots of one page and bail usage and low time on page indicators.  

Mergers and acquisitions are all the rage and have been for a number of years.  Big companies have income and no real way to get ROI on investments in standard vehicles.   So they go shopping in hopes of such.

Inc 500 list in 2014 put iNET Interactive at 2013 revenue of $14 million.

[SIZE=13.63636302948px]I suspect Penton paid a silly high premium on the acquisition (i.e. purchased for quite a bit more than annual revenue).[/SIZE]

 

[Francisco]

More likely you have to get PREMIUM or CORPORATE membership to post ad threads.... not impossible but would probably also kill a lot of the userbase - We'll see.

I honestly  HAVE paid for both Corporate and Premium before, both are not worth it.

Honestly that would purge their section pretty hard.

There's already a lot of Corporate membership users that are upset about how overstuffed the sales threads are. I did some rough counts a year or so ago and on certain days there would be 40 - 50 sales posts on a day, meaning if you posted in the morning there was a good chance you'd be on page 3+ by the end of the day.

This is more or less how digitalpoint does it. If you're not a premium user, you can post/bump your thread once a month. If you're premium you can post every week.

It's capitalism at its finest but given how many sales posts go in there, it'd probably curb the amount of pump/dumps we all see.

Francisco

 

[iWF-Jacob]

Honestly that would purge their section pretty hard.


There's already a lot of Corporate membership users that are upset about how overstuffed the sales threads are. I did some rough counts a year or so ago and on certain days there would be 40 - 50 sales posts on a day, meaning if you posted in the morning there was a good chance you'd be on page 3+ by the end of the day.


This is more or less how digitalpoint does it. If you're not a premium user, you can post/bump your thread once a month. If you're premium you can post every week.


It's capitalism at its finest but given how many sales posts go in there, it'd probably curb the amount of pump/dumps we all see.


Francisco

Oh... Dont even get me started on DigitalPoint. I've all but given up there, it's just a total shithole. I try bumping a sales thread and it doesn't work, cant rename the thread. Many years ago you posted as you would at WHT, there was no bumping. A couple months ago I got something like seven warnings for posts probably back in 2009 or so. Just pure craziness over there.

 

[Steven F]

Thought I'd pop in here and just say a few things. iNet, for the time being, will remain an independent organization. The only change is that Dennis is leaving us and we will have a new person between iNet and the moderators/administrators. At this time, I can tell you that I know of not a single change to pricing or the way WHT functions.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=9350605&postcount=5

Please remember that advertising is something that iNet sells. They are currently almost always sold out. Their goal is, and always will be, to maximize profits. You may see sticky threads go up, but Dennis has stated that there are no plans on the table. As there is a large demand for a small supply, I expected the pricing to go up long ago.

Personally, I think they should do it on a bidding basis. Every week or two weeks, you can bid starting from a minimum amount. The top six bidders get the stickies. Plain and simple. [This won't happen ever, though]

Maybe they finally replace some of the idiotic mods/admins...

 

[Francisco]

So do the mods/admins see the current sales sections as a problem due to the amount of volume they push? Or has any discussion like that not made it to your ranks yet?

Francisco

 

[KuJoe]

I still wear my iNet jacket regularly and get people who ask me if it's the same iNet that owns XYZ website. Hopefully this doesn't sully their rep and I need to start dodging rotten vegetables or something.

 

[drmike]

The volume of ads - in WHT offers section is deafening.

Me, my little old self, think the frequent posting is far too gracious and should be reduced to twice a month tops.  This way people make their offers original, something worth it, etc.  Lots of what gets posted is autodump of same ad and that, meh, not so great.  Like talking in a noisy room just to appear you are there and included.

Those stickies, perhaps they work for someone.   Based on cost, bahaha.  Yeah,  not going there with folks money.  

 

[Francisco]

The volume of ads - in WHT offers section is deafening.

Me, my little old self, think the frequent posting is far too gracious and should be reduced to twice a month tops.  This way people make their offers original, something worth it, etc.  Lots of what gets posted is autodump of same ad and that, meh, not so great.  Like talking in a noisy room just to appear you are there and included.

Those stickies, perhaps they work for someone.   Based on cost, bahaha.  Yeah,  not going there with folks money.

Remember, WHT is a business and is going to push for the highest profit w/o pissing everyne off.

Removing the quick posting privs. of the corp memberships would make no one bother buying it.

If they changed it so non prem/corp people wouldn't be able to post all they'd lose is hosts that aren't committed to them enough to pay for a subscription, etc.

They'll likely leave it as it is for now but every few months there's a resurgence of corporate members being upset.

Francisco

 

[raindog308]

I still wear my iNet jacket regularly and get people who ask me if it's the same iNet that owns XYZ website. Hopefully this doesn't sully their rep and I need to start dodging rotten vegetables or something.

Did you get that for being a FreeWHT admin/mod/whatever?

That place is such a sad ghost town now.

 

[KuJoe]

Did you get that for being a FreeWHT admin/mod/whatever?

That place is such a sad ghost town now.

Yeah, they flew me out to Ohio/Kentucky one year and it was awesome and having lived in Florida my whole life I didn't know the definition of cold so when I got off the plane I was not prepared. Luckily they provided iNet jackets (and ice cream). All of the iNet people were great and I was super impressed by everything I learned about their infrastructure and revenue streams (sadly FreeWHT being the lowest). While their goal at the end of the day is to make money, they spent a lot of time and effort into building communities with the main focus being the users, even users who weren't spending a dime.

 

[Steven F]

So do the mods/admins see the current sales sections as a problem due to the amount of volume they push? Or has any discussion like that not made it to your ranks yet?


Francisco

I don't recall any discussions between us moderators about advertising volume. If you have any ideas, I'd be glad to bring them up and get a discussion going. Sadly, it's not so simple as just changing posting times as everyone would get pissed off.

I still wear my iNet jacket regularly and get people who ask me if it's the same iNet that owns XYZ website. Hopefully this doesn't sully their rep and I need to start dodging rotten vegetables or something.

I have an iNet/WebHostingTalk shirt, but I've never worn it. Good quality, but I don't wear golf shirts.