British directories publisher Yell Group Plc bought do-it-yourself website designer Moonfruit Ltd for 18 million pounds in its ongoing attempt to transform itself from a print-dominated business to a web-driven entity.
Within the acquisition announcement, Yell has made it clear that Moonfruit’s senior management team have a golden handcuffs deal that will see retention bonuses of £5.2 million paid for staying at the company for two years.
According to Moonfruit CEO Wendy Tan White, Yell was one of three companies in discussion to acquire the business. Although it wasn’t the maximum price offered, she felt that Yell provided the best home for the business. This is because Yell — which earned £2 billion in 2011 — is undergoing its own transformation from a print and online advertising company to a digital marketplace for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This “eMarketplace” strategy focuses on providing a broad range of digital services to help small businesses grow and transact online.
The acquisition of Moonfruit will help Yell advance this strategy by providing the technology for businesses to build websites, mobile sites and eCommerce services. Moonfruit was founded in 2000 and, since then, almost five million websites and 230,000 online shops have been built using Moonfruit.com technology.
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i
was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you reduce it, any plugin or anything you can suggest?
I get so much lately it’s driving me crazy so any help is very much appreciated.
If you look around you will find that WordPress has a lot of spam detection plugins. Also make sure you set up your blog to not auto post comments.