Who do you expect to buy vBulletin from Internet Brands?

Well, Brandon asked how long it'll be until they sell it off, so I thought it'd be interesting to ask about the next logical thing.

So when Internet Brands inevitably do sell off vBulletin sometime after vBulletin 5 (maybe late this year or early next year) due to a lack of profit or whatever, who do you expect to buy the company?

Will it end up being owned by a smaller group like their competitors?

Would a big company in the CMS market or something take it over?

Heck, could a competitor end up owning it and merging it with their script?

What do you think will happen here?

 

Wouldn't that be interesting, say if IPB or xenforo purchased it.

 

why would they? They don't need to.

Also it would be a bit stupid of IB to now sell it off. Think of it this way... all of the forums they own... it works a lot better if you have the forum software in your group of companies. They can make developments just for them.

As long as it is all paid for... would be a dumb move to divest it now.

I don't believe IB is a publicly traded company so we can see their books, however VB still is the most used forum by far I would imagine.

 

vb5 could be an excellent money maker if it successfully torpedoes websites that compete with IB.

 

If they do hopefully someone smart does. I think it has a lot of potential, it is just a bit premature.

 

Firstly any person(s)/company would have to meet IB's asking price and I don't think they would let it go for cheap. Secondly any person(s)/company would probably have to rewrite the software from scratch. So that's a big initial investment of time and monies. I doubt that xF could afford to purchase vB and I don't see why IPB would even bother, especially since they are in the process of rewriting their script to transform it into the "Suite".

 

Not sure they can make developments for anyone. Even though IB has a large number of forums, it is still small compared to using your own software. If they cannot even develop for the whole vb community, they cannot develop for IBs own vb sites neither.

 

What I mean is that they can have modifications specifically for the forums they own.

 

They do not run vbulletin 5 and mostly do not run vb4 either.
They have thousands of websites. Many are not listed on their main site and many websites do not display that they are owned by IB.

 

If I won a mega-lotto ($200 million or such) I'd put in a serious offer to buy VB from IB.

 

If you were to acquire vB. what direction would you take the software/company?

 

I would enslave children in a 3rd world country to code it, raise the price, and sell it to unsuspecting people until I got rich! Suckers- I'm going to buy a private island with your broken dreams!

J/K... I would take it back to forum-centric software as I am not a big fan of calling it a "community" or chasing Facebook... but that is just my personal opinion.

 

I don't think they will sell no matter what to be honest. They have a huge network of forums running that script so they are going to keep it as what they want it to be for them. The best way for that to happen? They keep it.