HandHeld Entertainment said this week it would change its name to Zvue (SeaView?) choosing to name itself after its $99 portable video flash players which now draw video from UGC and Social networking sites that it has recently acquired. The company also an announced $5 million financing from company co-founder, Carl Page.
‘The acquisition of eBaum’s World is a transformational event for the company and clearly places us among the recognized industry giants,’ said Jeff Oscodar, president and CEO of HandHeld Entertainment, ‘This transaction makes us a major force in the online entertainment industry. Advertisers are already spending more than $1 billion a year on user-generated content sites, and that amount is expected to grow to more than $4 billion by 2011.’
Zvue bought eBaum’s world two weeks ago which had revenues of $5.2 million in 2006, and made a $3.0 million EBITDA, with up to 19 million daily unique visitors per month and over 2.5 billion page views per year but the interesting thing was the fact that all of the traffic acquisition has come without any marketing.
The company claims that it is the second ranked video site when measured by the amount of time spent on the site, behind Google’s YouTube and it has signed strategic partnerships with AOL Video, Fox Mobile, Facebook, Helio, and Orange.
With its other web properties Zvue says it will have 24 million unique visitors a month and 3.5 billion page views annually including UGC, humor and extreme sports, with some 12,000 titles from major producers such as Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Showtime, International Marketing Group, and Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Zvue said that it still only expects revenue of between $6.0 million and $6.5 million for 2007.