Glam Media has just acquired Ning, the build-your-own-social-network startup co-founded by Netscape creator Marc Andreessen. Glam is best known for building Web properties and an ad network targeting women, and it says it now reaches more than 200 million monthly users. Last month, it announced plans to move aggressively into the mobile market. Now, CEO Samir Arora said the company is making a similar social push while taking advantage of Ning's existing products and audience. "We made a decision that instead of building our own social platform, we looked at Ning, and after we did our due diligence, we said, "Would you be interested in going after this together?'" Arora said. Together, Ning and Glam say they can reach more than 240 million users. Publishers in the Glam network will have have access to Ning's social networking tools, while Glam will start running its brand ads along existing Ning properties. Arguing that LinkedIn created "Jobs 2.0" and Zynga offers "Games 2.0", Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal said the combined company will be the first one tackling "Social for Content 2.0." At one time, Ning was one of the biggest names the social networking landscape, thanks to Andreessen's cachet (he also founded Opsware, sits on the board of directors at Facebook, and runs the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz) and funding that valued the company at $750 million. Since then, its luster has faded somewhat, after a 2009 restructuring that saw the elimination of... Continue reading at 'AdWeek'
[ AdWeek | 2011-09-21 00:00:00 UTC ]