IAC: Zwinky Delivers; Reveille Investment Unwound

A couple of additional notes from IAC’s earnings earlier this week:

Zwinky.com: A lot about virtual worlds in various earning calls this quarter. IAC provided some details on its entrant, Fun Web Products’ Zwinky.com: more than 8 million registered users, an average user session of 64 minutes, more than 15 million transactions using Zwinky virtual currency. COO Doug Lebda: “In addition to monetizing through search, there are clearly e-commerce opportunities with Zwinky, as well.” Analysts skipped right by it during the call but the NYT’s Bits blog followed up: “The catch is to use any of these services, you have to download a toolbar that will install in your Web browser that prominently features a box for searches (by, of course, Ask). The advertising revenue from these searches has become a $100 million a year business ….” Zwinky’s still in beta.

Reveille: A small amount by IAC terms but mentioned by CFO Tom McInerney because it had a positive impact on emerging business results — an $8.2 million “non-recurring” gain from an investment in Reveille. The SEC filing puts it a little differently: “Emerging Businesses results were positively impacted by an $8.2 million reimbursement of advances related to the restructuring of our interests in a business venture.” I’m told the investment was unwound because Ben Silverman moved from heading the production company to running programming for NBCU. MediaPost has more.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post