|
Yahoo to sell HotJobs to Monster
SAN JOSE, Calif, Feb 03, 2010 (San Jose Mercury News - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) --
Yahoo said it plans to sell its HotJobs employment search service to Monster for $225 million in cash and a three-year agreement that it would pay Yahoo for job seekers who click through to Monster.com.
Yahoo said the sale would allow the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet portal to focus on Internet search, media and other areas of its core business, while still earning revenue from online recruiting.
"It's difficult to be No. 3 in a market that has a number of other strong players," said Scot Melland, CEO of New York-based Dice Holdings, which runs career-specific employment search Web sites. "After a few years, it became apparent that HotJobs just wasn't a priority for Yahoo."
The deal, which is subject to antitrust approval and is expected to close in the third quarter, would place a link to Monster on Yahoo's home page in the U.S. and Canada, and would earn Yahoo annual payments based on clicks and job applications filed at Monster.com. It also gives Monster the exclusive right to negotiate similar deals with Yahoo for its properties in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
"We have substantially added quality traffic, while substantially increasing our customer base," said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Monster Worldwide, in a call with analysts and journalists. HotJobs averaged 12.6 million unique visitors a month, according to Media Metrix comScore reporting.
Still, that traffic trailed larger generalist job-search sites such as Monster and Career Builder in a marketplace that also included Craig's List and regional and specialized sites such as Dice.com, which focuses on tech jobs.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said there would be no immediate job impact, but that Monster expects 275 HotJobs employees would ultimately move over to Monster.
Yahoo also agreed to sell its Zimbra e-mail, calendar and collaboration platform to VMware in January, but CEO Carol Bartz said in a recent call with analysts that the company is largely done reshaping itself, and does not plan major acquisitions or divestitures during her second year at the helm.
"2010 is not about divestitures for Yahoo," Bartz said, adding: "We're done looking inward. We're looking outward at the increased opportunities ahead."
The HotJobs sale is another example of Bartz's efforts to focus Yahoo's efforts on what it does well, said Karsten Weide, an analyst who follows Yahoo for the research firm IDC. "It's another step in Carol Bartz' process to clean up shop," he said. "It's a good deal in that sense."
With the addition of HotJobs' network of more than 600 daily and weekly newspapers, which includes the Mercury News, Monster's alliances with local papers will grow to approximately 1,000, placing Monster in all 50 states.
Yahoo will continue to manage its broader Newspaper Consortium partnership _ a network that includes the Mercury News _ providing both search and display advertising, content distribution, and its ad-serving platform.
Once the deal is finalized, that platform will include jobs listed by Monster instead of HotJobs.
___
(c) 2010, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Visit MercuryNews.com, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News, at http://www.mercurynews.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or
847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group
Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
[ Back To Smart Grid Home's Homepage ]
|