Hearst Corporation to acquire shoppers'' web site Kaboodle

13 August 2007

Mumbai: US publishing group Hearst Corporation is acquiring social shopping community web site Kaboodle Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Hearst and Kaboodle Inc, both privately-held companies, plan to build on the web site where shoppers can network and make recommendations on products. Kaboodle also lets its 250,000 registered users rate and review products at various shopping sites, and recommend items to other users.

Hearst said it would build pages on Kaboodle featuring products from many of its 19 US magazine titles, such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, in a bid to draw more activity from its 30 million web visitors.

Santa Clara, California-based Kaboodle, operator of Kaboodle.com, has more than 2 million monthly visitors in the US. The site generates revenue through fees for advertisements.

The acquisition follows a deal by Hearst last month to buy UGO Networks Inc., a network of web sites devoted to video games, movies and other entertainment, as it sought a bigger chunk of the male internet audience.