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Social Networking - Monday, August 27, 2007

Fotolog Bought By French Ad Network For $90M

NYC-based Fotolog has been acquired by Paris-based, publicly-traded Hi Media for $90M (77% in Hi Media stock and the remainder in cash). Fotolog says it serves 10M users, 15M monthly unique visitors and 3.3B page per month. Founded in 2002, Fotolog has done three rounds of funding, most recently a $4.1M round with 3i, BV Capital and angel investors.

Fotolog has been an Alexa top 20 site however because its user base tends to sit outside North America, it has a tough time monetizing them. Fotolog had just signed a deal with the ad network that best monetizes international traffic - Google. It is interesting to note that Hi-Media is itself an ad network that and says it will look to increase payout performance, so there must be some inventory on the site that Google doesn't get.

It's good to see that with Fotolog, one of the inventors of modern social networking - Adam Seifer who launched Six Degree back in 1996 - should get some financial reward and recognition. Fotolog is led by John Borthwick who was an SVP of Alliances at Time Warner.

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