Sony Buys Local Video Web Site for 65 Million $$$$$$$
 

Aug. 23 - KGO - Amateur videos are the rage on the Internet. Sony today paid $65 million to buy a small Sausalito Web site that shares those videos with millions of fans.

The staff at Grouper.com doesn't produce anything. Instead, it posts the videos shot and edited by others, like amateur videos of someone ice skating or playing guitar.

Josh Felser, Grouper.com Co-Founder: "It's raw and it's authentic. I think that's what people are drawn to. The authenticity of what's being shared. You're getting a window into someone's life that you might have never seen before."

The Web site has drawn eight million users. It also has drawn the attention of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which plunked down $65 million to buy it.

The site is popular among people 18 to 34, an audience Sony wants to target to promote its movies and to exploit its large library of movies and TV shows.

grouper....damn welcome to last week.

nice.. nice move by sony

It sounds expensive but if they paid that price the userbase must have been pretty huge.

Less then 1% of internet users ?

Grouper has just surpassed 8 million unique visitors per month who view approximately 50 million pages. Grouper has also registered more than 500,000 members, the majority of which have signed up this year.

sounds like they paid too much imho, maybe 64 million too much

Yeah, the site itself just doesn't strike me as that great of a buy.