TechCrunch: Insider Pages Acquisition Set

TechCrunch published a report today that Insider Pages, the review site that has been actively shopped for some time, may have found a buyer for more than the $8.5 million it raised last March from Sequoia and Softbank Capital.

I would speculate that possible purchasers are probably Citysearch, YellowPages.com or R.H. Donnelley. Theoretically, YellowPages.com and RHD would have the most to gain from such an acquisition, since they could use the 600,000-plus reviews as a building block for their own review archives. YellowPages.com, in fact, has just rolled out a review feature, and it is going to be tough to ramp it up quickly. It could also use Insider’s crack tech team.

But some people’s money would actually be on Citysearch as a buyer. While Citysearch wouldn’t incorporate the technology, it would like to get hold of the 3 million-plus unique viewers that come to the site every month. It could also gain from SEOing all the businesses that are covered. I bet there isn’t even 10 percent overlap with Citysearch. Theoretically, City could also integrate “Insider Advice,” a Yahoo! Answers-like feature. Still … $9 million or so is a lot for what are  basically  aging reviews.