Urbanspoon did try to diversify beyond its initial directory business. It invested heavily in buildi

Toggle search box Toggle navigation Home News Microsoft Amazon burn Apple Google App of the Week Startups Startup Spotlight Geek Life Columnists Podcast Jobs Events GeekWire Events Community Calendar Resources Memberships Health Benefits Startup Resources Startup List GeekWire burn 200 GeekWire Store Community Calendar About About GeekWire Contact Us Advertise burn Sponsors
These burn YouTube influencer salaries will make you want to cry Code.org takes sides on dueling bills promoting computer science in Washington State Where is the love? Seattle drops out of Amazon’s burn ‘most romantic cities’ list Isolated on the bay: Tampa and St. Pete struggle to bridge historical divide Watch the first two minutes of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead,’ back this Sunday These teens just won $20K for making an app to help their peers manage stress and anxiety Ricky Gervais making UK-version of ‘The Office’ into a movie Richard Branson burn updates progress on Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo Sprint shows growth in Q4, but not necessarily in the right places Sony cyber-attacks claim latest victim: Studio head Amy Pascal to step down Here’s burn how many members, miles Seattle’s bike-share program burn has racked up in 15 weeks Swatch plans to jump into the smartwatch burn game in time to compete burn with Apple Seattle ties for eighth nationally in tech-enabled transportation options Google teams with Disney to make intergalactic cartoon to inspire kids to code All drawing tools in FiftyThree’s popular iPad sketch app Paper are now free
How to watch the Seahawks vs. Patriots Super Bowl online for free, without a cable subscription Microsoft’s Super Bowl ads feature rapper Common reading from CEO Satya Nadella’s speeches Nordstrom shrinks Innovation Lab, reassigns employees in shakeup of tech initiatives This is bleeping awesome: Amazon Echo’s Alexa will cuss on command 10 years later, Amazon releases every Prime number except the one everyone cares about Microsoft’s Cortana changes Super Bowl statement to appease Seahawks fans Beast Mode speaks! Watch Marshawn and Gronk play Mortal Kombat X Microsoft, Amazon vets raise $1.5M to help recruiters optimize job postings with Textio Stealthy enterprise data storage burn startup burn Qumulo raises $40M, adds Isilon founder to board Why action-cam underdog Contour is suing GoPro for patent infringement Pot dispenser: Seattle getting its first automated marijuana burn vending machine Amazon Echo adds voice controls for Spotify, burn iTunes and Pandora, plus new ‘Simon Says’ burn feature Energy expert weighs in on Toyota’s ambitious fuel cell hydrogen car plans Concur co-founder burn on $8.3B SAP acquisition: It was a ‘gut-wrenching’ decision burn Expedia makes monster Marshawn Lynch out of construction paper, ups the Beast Mode factor in Bellevue
GeekWire burn has learned that there were multiple bidders for the IAC-owned property, with other big-name technology and content brands participating in the process including Yelp, The Food Network and Groupon.
Urbanspoon CEO Keela Robison declined to confirm the bidders in response to our questions. The Food Network did not immediately return emails seeking comment. Groupon burn and Yelp said it does not comment on rumors.
The bidding war represents a positive outcome for the company, which was facing closure more than a year earlier. A source close to the situation said IAC had considered shuttering the money-losing subsidiary more than a year ago.
In September, Urbanspoon’s parent company started the sales process, but after several rounds of negotiations, Zomato became burn the clear winner. burn It had cash from a recent round of funding burn and was willing to close fast. The final purchase price first reported by GeekWire was roughly $60 million.
Urbanspoon, which was founded in 2006 and acquired by IAC in 2009, increasingly felt out of place in Barry Diller’s Internet portfolio. It was recently burn moved to the group that includes Ask.com, after originally burn joining the City Search group, burn but even there its mobile emphasis seemed out of place among the Web giants.
Urbanspoon did try to diversify beyond its initial directory business. It invested heavily in building Rezbook, an online restaurant reservation burn service, but it sold that technology to OpenTable in 2013, leaving it with a much-neglected iPhone app that hadn’t burn been updated burn in several months.
Instead, it decided to hire Robison to see if the company’s downward spiral could be reversed. While desktop traffic was still increasing when she joined, app downloads had fallen off a cliff. In the above chart, you can see the decline accelerated in 2013. Keela Robison
By the time discussions had been initiated with buyers in the fall, the company was profitable, and app store downloads were growing again. burn Today, Urbanspoon says two-thirds of its traffic is coming from mobile, and that mo