14 March 2006 in Business | Comments enabled

With the recent sale of TradeMe it’s no surprise that I’m hearing all sorts of people talking about starting some form of online business. It’s interesting to see that existing online businesses are all getting a bit more of an uptake thanks to the sale.

I noticed last week comments about NZDating.co.nz and how they have more than half a million members now and talking about how much traffic they’re getting. It seems like some of these sites are now salivating over how much they could be worth based only on how much traffic they receive.

The interesting site that seems to be gaining strongly from the TradeMe deal is Zillion. Zillion is a competing online auction site and they’ve received some good press in the last week. So much so that on the 6th of March their sever was overloaded. Then they increased their traffic by 100% in a week. That’s not too bad – they must be pretty happy.

What I’ve found interesting about the TradeMe sale is how it’s brought big business to the kitchen table. It seems most people aren’t even aware that big deals happen all the time. Perhaps because so many people are involved in using TradeMe they take notice. Perhaps because they were acquired by a publishing company they get more press than other deals? It seems most people discussing the TradeMe sale are completely unaware, for example, of the 3.3billion dollar take over attempt on CCH.

So what’s my point?

I’m really just happy to see more people taking an interest in what’s happening in business circles. Even if most of them are just wowed by the 700m dollar figure I just hope that people take a moment to look at what other activities are going on in our own backyard.

- JD