Active Rain has Been Sold... Now What?

Active Rain CEO and co-founder, Jonathan Washburn, announced today on his blog that he is stepping down as CEO of ActiveRain. Online software Giant Market Leader will be taking over the helm according to Inman News. The question remains, what does this mean for the ActiveRain community.

My dad once asked me, "Have you ever known change to be good." While I admit most of the time it isn't, I think sometimes it can be. The question still remains whether it will be now. To determine this, It may be useful to look at the major corperate buyouts of social media sites.

Case #1 Time Warner Merges AOL

There is no question that this relationship ended as disaster. The only person that came out on top was Ted Turner who still, to this day, says it was the best deal he ever made. Aside from old Citizen Cane himself laughing all the way to the bank, everyone else bit the dust

Case #2 News Corp Purchases MySpace.com

This is another disaster. Myspace was once the prime social media website plain and simple. With Millions of users, including Rock Stars, and Entertainment studios, and users signing up daily, News Corp thought it would be a slam dunk. With only one tiny, insignificant competitor called Facebook, News Corp Purchased the social media giant in July 2005. News corp is definitely tryin to get out of the social media site they ran into the ground.

Case #3 Google Purchases YouTube

While this hasn't blown up yet. Google has still yet to turn a profit with the video networking site. They have had to settle several multimillion dollar lawsuites. One with Viacom.

Case #4 Microsoft Purchases Skype

This one is worth mentioning even though it just happened this week. Certianly there hasn;t been enough time to analize the success or failure of this purchase. I mention it simply to illustrate that huge corporations are still willing to pay ungoldly sums of money for social media site that have never turned a profit. They do so knowing the failures of others who have tried to turn around other popular, but unprofitable social media sites.

So what now for ActiveRain?

Well if history indicates anything it is that large corporate giants do not yet know how to maintain the personal and welcoming feel of a popular social media site. I expect some changes for sure that will be unpopular.

1. Mainly, everything that's been free in the past will have to be monetized somehow. We will not know how until it happens, but users aren't fond of moving from free to anything else.

2. The site will also have to dramatically increase the number of users. Whether or not it will become open is yet to be seen, but we can surely expect it to get a little more crowded in here.

3. Users who pay to play will get far more features and use out of the website. We chumps who want to stay free will be relogated to a back room somewhere.

These are just a few of my thoughts. Please feel free to add your own.