In an effort to bulk up its services to its business customers, InfoSpace.com Inc.
Monday acquired Union-Street.com, a site that provides business to business Web services.
Under the terms of the acquisition, InfoSpace.com (INSP) will exchange 450,000 shares of its common stock for all of Union-Street.com’s outstanding shares, warrants and options. The purchase is valued at approximately $18 million and is expected to be completed in October.
InfoSpace provides a host of directory services to consumers and third party Web sites. Monday’s acquisition will add a series of personalization features to its list of services. Unio-Street adds e-mail, address books, calendars, chat features and message boards to its customers’ sites. Its offerings will be integrated into InfoSpace’s network, said Naveen Jain, InfoSpace chairman and chief executive officer.
“Web communities are the realization of how to build relationship marketing on the Web,” Jain said. “The addition of these additional on-line business to business services, such as private label e-mail services, will help our affiliates offer users more compelling reasons to stay on their site longer and also target users for direct marketing opportunities, increasing e-commerce and advertising revenues.”
Monday’s acquisition is the latest purchase made to boost InfoSpace’s offerings. In August, the company paid approximately $37.5 million for INEX Corp., a provider storefront building resources and in July bought
technology, MyAgent, for $18 million.