Seo, Development and Internet Observatory

By Christo Volschenk
Another South African classifieds platform owner is looking north for growth. The African technology news site Techloy reported (here) that South African real estate platform PrivatepropertySA bought a stake in Nigerian real estate platform Propertiesng.com for an...

By Christo Volschenk
The Swiss business magazine Bilanz published an interview last week with Christian Unger, CEO of Swiss media group Ringier, on the company’s digital strategy. We publish excerpts below. Go here for the full interview (in German).

Mr. Unger: Our company is built on three pillars, namely...

by Christo Volschenk
Yesterday Monster Worldwide lowered its projections for 1Q revenue and earnings and announced cost-saving measures, including the lay-off of about 400 employees worldwide (about 100 of them in the U.S.). Monster Worldwide CEO Sal Iannuzzi told Reuters the job market is unlikely to change “for the time being”. In response, the share price took a heavy knock (...

by Christo Volschenk
In an interview with a group journalist Christian Unger, CEO of Swiss media group Ringier, said in Davos, Switzerland today “2012 will be a year of acquisitions” for the company.

“We are in talks with a big company in East Europe. Furthermore, we have a long watchlist of small and medium-sized  businesses we would like to acquire,” Unger said.

Ringier finalized the acquisition of a 70-percent stake in the...

Is Canada’s housing market in a bubble that, like real estate across the globe, is due to burst soon? Not likely, suggests a panel of real estate and financial experts put together by RealtyTimes. There will be some softening in 2012, but no major crash.

TD Economics, for example predicts that sales will record average declines of 2.4 percent in 2012 and 3.5 percent in 2013...

by Christo Volschenk
ImmobilienScout24.de, Germany’s leading real estate platform, is getting ready to move into Austria. An Austrian company has been registered and a website has gone live (ImmobilienScout24.at).

Unfortunately, efforts to get more information from the Berlin-based...

By Christo Volschenk
EBay Germany and EBay Austria are in the midst of a market test, which may end up with these e-commerce platforms playing an active role in every transaction concluded.

Until Aug. 22 EBay.de and Ebay.at were simply platforms where buyers and sellers met and transacted between themselves, with EBay playing no active role in transactions. Since that day, EBay accepts money from (some) buyers and dishes it out again...