IT Mergers & Acquisitions

Answers Corporation , creators of Answers.com  service, today announced the acquisition of FAQ Farm, a leading wiki-based website containing a content-rich, cross-disciplinary library of user-contributed questions and answers. The initial integration of FAQ Farm into Answers.com is expected to launch in Q1, 2007.

The acquisition was completed for $2 million in cash, representing a multiple of approximately five times revenue, based on unaudited numbers. Additional terms of the transaction will be included by Answers in its current report scheduled to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission later today.

Answers.com offers visitors free access to comprehensive information on almost four million topics, drawn from over 100 branded encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses and other sources. FAQ Farm represents Answers’ initial foray into the burgeoning area of community and user generated content, often called the social web or Web 2.0. FAQ Farm generates over 12 million pageviews per month, has 280,000 unique questions and answers on its website, and over 100,000 registered “FAQ Farmer” contributors. As is common in wikis, FAQ Farm’s questions and answers are submitted by members of the community and then enhanced over time to increase accuracy, reliability and relevance.

FAQ Farm was founded in 2002 by Chris Whitten, a pioneer in the Q&A arena, who realized that the wiki model could be used to prevent the same questions from being asked repetitively, and enable answers to be improved upon collaboratively so that they combine different people’s perspectives and experience. Chris will continue to oversee and improve FAQ Farm, and will integrate the site’s content and technology into Answers.com while adding the authoritative sources of Answers.com to FAQ Farm.