Internet Brands

Internet Brands, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Internet media
Founded	June 27, 1998 (1998-06-27)[1] (as CarsDirect)
Headquarters	El Segundo, California, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Robert Brisco, President and CEO
Products	Consumer websites; software applications
Revenue	US$99.8 million (2009)
Operating income	US$20.2 million (2009)
Net income	US$12.4 million (2009)
Owner	Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P.
Website	InternetBrands.com

Internet Brands, Inc. is an American new media company based in El Segundo, California, United States, that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The company also develops and licenses internet software and social media applications.

Businesses

The company operates two divisions: consumer internet and licensing.

Consumer Internet division

The consumer internet division owns and operates more than 95 websites in seven categories. The company attracts more than 62 million unique visitors per month, with 97% of the audience originating from organic, non-paid sources.^[2][3][4] The company's strategy is to focus on specific target audiences that tend to be attractive to advertisers.^[5][6][7]

On December 1, 2010, Internet Brands acquired AllLaw.com and AttorneyLocate.com, both founded by Arvind A. Raichur.^[8]

SEC filings indicate that approximately 70% of the company's revenues are derived from advertising from more than 40,000 accounts—most of them small and medium enterprises.

The company's portfolio of websites include many with social media features: social network services, user generated content, blogs, wikis, and internet forums,^[9][10] with over half a million registered users across forums.

Owned websites: Apartment Ratings, Ben's Bargains, CarsDirect, CorvetteForum, Craftster, DoItYourself.com, DVD Talk, EPodunk, FitDay, FlyerTalk, HealthBoards, Model Mayhem, Professional Pilots Rumour Network, WAHM (magazine), Wikitravel.

History

The company was founded in 1998 as CarsDirect.com, launched from the business incubator Idealab. The company invented a consumer-advocacy approach to selling cars "haggle-free" online, an approach it continues to employ.^[11] In 2000, Roger Penske invested in the company and joined the Board of Directors. In 2002, Time Magazine voted the site one of the 50 best in the world.^[12]

The company changed its name to Internet Brands in 2005.^[13] The company's IPO was in November 2007 on the NASDAQ exchange.^[14] INET was added to the NASDAQ Internet Index on March 22, 2010.^[15]

Internet Brands agreed to be acquired for $640 million by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in September 2010 ^[16][17] and was thus delisted from NASDAQ.^[18]

In September 2012, Internet Brands became involved in a legal battle with the Wikimedia Foundation (the operators of Wikipedia) over the future of Wikitravel's community.^[19][20][21]

Internet Brands was acquired in June 2014 by KKR from Hellman & Friedman for 1.1 billion dollars.^[22] KKR is making its investment in partnership with Internet Brands chief executive officer Bob Brisco and the Internet Brands management team, who will hold a minority stake in the company and continue to run the business.^[23]

In January 2016, Intuit Inc. announced an agreement to sell Demandforce to Internet Brands.^[24]

Controversies

vBulletin criticism

In October 2009, Internet Brands changed the pricing structure for its vBulletin software, prompting complaints from registered users on the official forums. According to The Register those who complained were then banned from both the forums and from receiving support and updates, despite still having valid licences for the product.^[25] Internet Brands defended their position to The Register in a separate article; however, a later update to the same article stated that at least some of Internet Brands' claims were false.^[26]

vBulletin and XenForo

In October 2010, Internet Brands announced that it would file a lawsuit against the XenForo team claiming copyright infringement; specifically that code in XenForo was based on vBulletin code, breach of contract, and engaging in unfair business practices.^[27] In November 2010, Internet Brands sued Kier Darby, a lead developer of XenForo, who had previously served as a lead developer for Internet Brands' vBulletin, claiming that Kier had not returned confidential information from Internet Brands regarding the vBulletin software. The XenForo team has denied the claims.^[28] In February 2013, the lawsuit was dismissed.^[29]

Wikitravel and Wikimedia

In 2012, after a lengthy history of dissatisfaction, community members at Internet Brands-owned website Wikitravel began discussing whether to fork (split off) of their work and editing activities from Wikitravel and recommence their editing activities at another website host.^[30][31] The dissatisfaction related to long standing discontent at poor hosting, poor site updates, and excessive over-monetarization and advertising, and eventually, interference by Internet Brands in the community's activities in breach of prior agreements and understandings.^[32]

Forking is a normal or anticipated activity in wiki communities and is permitted by the Creative Commons license in use on sites such as WikiTravel, and the wiki software used for WikiTravel included the facility to take 'database "dumps"' for that purpose.^[32] This mirrored the fork of the German and Italian language Wikitravel communities some years earlier, which led to a new travel wiki site called Wikivoyage. Members of the communities concerned decided that the community at Wikitravel would move its editing efforts to merge with Wikivoyage, to create a new travel wiki to be hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, the owner of Wikipedia and a large range of other non-profit reference sites based upon a wiki community.^{[33][34][35][36]}

The merge and move were endorsed by the editing community^[37] but opposed by Internet Brands who litigated against two users it accused of unlawful actions related to the proposal. The allegations were strongly rejected by the individuals and the (non-party) Wikimedia Foundation who stated the case was an example of a SLAPP lawsuit intended to deter and frustrate lawful conduct.^[38] On November 19, 2012 the claims by Internet Brands were dismissed by the United States District Court for the Central District of California.^[39]

Greenlight Financial Services

In April 2013, on behalf of its client Greenlight Financial Services, Inc., the Rhema Law Group won a jury verdict trial against Internet Brands, Inc. The Orange County Superior Court jury found that Internet Brands breached a previous settlement agreement between the parties and awarded lost profits damages in the amount of $750,000.^[40]

Model Mayhem

In May 2008 Internet Brands bought Model Mayhem from the original developers Donald and Taylor Waitt.^[41] Between 2006 and 2011 Lavont Flanders and Emerson Callum used Model Mayhem to contact women, arrange to meet them, drug them and then rape them while filming them, later publishing the video as pornography.^[41][42][43] Internet Brands allege that Tyler Waitt was aware of the investigation into Flanders and Callum at the time of the sale and are refusing to pay him for the site. Waitt in turn sued Internet Brands.^[41][42] One of Flanders's and Callum's victims is suing Internet Brands for failing to notify her of the danger posed by Flanders and Callum.^[41][42]

References