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News Corp buys parenting blog for $45m
Former Seek exec makes millions
News Corp has acquired a slew of parenting-focused blogs for a reported AU$45m from online entrepreneur Katie May.
The six-year-old online blog network Kidspot includes related entities Birth.com.au, Kidspot.co.nz, The Spot, SheSpot, Mums Say and Baby and Kids Market.
May was formerly a marketing executive at Phillip Morris and Booz Allen Hamilton and was part of the start-up team at Seek. She started Kidspot with partner Dani Gurrie in 2005 with AU$30,000. The founding chairman of Seek, Irvin Rockman, later backed the business and attracted a healthy group of investors. May is understood to own around 30 per cent of the business.
According to reports, the Kidspot group has revenues of $AU7m a year and over 1.3 million unique visitors a month.
News Limited CEO John Hartigan said: "[T]his deal makes us the leading player in the highly valuable online parenting market and, by combining Kidspot with the most dominant food vertical, Taste.com.au, and the most aspirational fashion vertical, Vogue.com.au, we now have an unrivalled presence in the online market for Australian women." ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
