But probably smart when the acquired asset is one with as poor a reputation as Zango / 180solutions .
So, will zango continue what it does now and offer advertising via adware or blinkx/pinball will completely change zangos business?
That I don't know -- it's really up to blinkx, and I have very little inside information there. But I have to imagine that the reason they bought Zango's assets (rather than, say, Miva, which they also made a run at last summer) is that they wanted the systems, technology, business and people, which implies that they're going to keep the business around in some fashion. As I said elsewhere, the folks that are dancing are Zango's grave are likely a bit premature.
I'm an advertiser on Zango. I haven't run a campaign for a few months. I only recently heard this news (was relaxing on a break for a few weeks). I logged into my account, and no mention of anything. Everything looks the same as before.
The only difference is a small message which says "Web Site Updated April 24: Please contact your Account Manager if you experience any difficulties."
I haven't tried running any new campaigns... don't even know if I should bother.
Juan Valdez: Again, I'm not in any way affiliated with blinkx, so I can't tell you what they're planning to do. But my understanding is that they're running Zango pretty much as-is. So if you want to run a campaign, I think you should be able to do so without much change (if any) from how you've always done it.
Thanks for the inside story Ken. As a former Zangoite on the dev team it was interesting to watch the revenue ebb and flow as we struggled with the anti-spyware companies and zealots.
Zango was a great place to work and I don't regret having the opportunity in spite of how things ended up.
As Ken mentioned and IMO the two main things that went wrong: we didn't give the user enough value and the "C-level" people didn't listen to good ideas. Myself and others on the engineering team gave lots of good alternatives to pop-ups and Val always agreed but nothing ever seemed to come of it.
I hope Keith and the gang start a new company, one without a bad reputation to fix and an even better business model. If they do, sign me up!
Commenting by HaloScan
