The Fox Interactive division of News Corp picked up NewRoo.com for between $5 million and $10 million, edging Yahoo aside to buy the 3-person startup.
Anyone who thought AOL’s acquisition of Truveo in December 2005 was fast will have their head spinning over Fox’s purchase of NewRoo, a company that has not officially launched.
TechCrunch reported on the purchase, first hinted at in early March by Fox Interactive president Ross Levinsohn. He announced at a conference that his company had purchased one of the 32 firms in attendance.
It turns out the NewRoo team has been developing a user-generated content site, as described in the article:
NewRoo is a real-time news aggregator that allows users to create their own customized news and content pages.
While this is a small acquisition for Fox, there is a clear product synergy with their Myspace and Fox Sports online properties – users of those sites can create their own music/youth related content sites in the case of Myspace, or sports related news sites in the case of Fox Sports.
PaidContent noted Yahoo entered the bidding for the company after learning of Fox’s interest in the unfunded startup.
In a review of the service last month by TechCrunch, it was observed that the site was testing Amazon’s affiliate links as a possible revenue generator for the service. NewRoo eventually planned to share revenue with users who created sites with the service.
It is not known if Fox will do this type of revenue sharing when the site launches.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
