HowAboutWe, a subscription-based club that serves up discounted, clever date ideas to couples and singles, has today announced the acquisition of Nerve.com. The acquisition signals a huge transition for HowAboutWe, which is looking to build out a new lifestyle media network, complete with an advertising division.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
As it stands now, HowAboutWe has two separate subscription-based properties, HowAboutWe Dating for singles and HowAboutWe couples for couples. These will continue to operate separately from the company’s new media network, which will henceforth be called HowAboutWe Media.
The idea is to offer singles a place to go after they’ve found a relationship, and then go above and beyond the IAC-backed online dating competition with new sex-centric content.
Nerve.Com, which is responsible for headlines like The 6 Weirdest Types Of Things That Get Said During Sex and What It’s Like For Disabled People To Have Sex, will undergo a redesign and relaunch as part of the deal.
Meanwhile, Nerve’s dating service, aptly named Nerve Dating, will be rolled into HowAboutWe’s existing dating platform, which currently boasts around 2 million users. HowAboutWe is offering current Nerve Dating users a free six month subscription as they transition over to HowAboutWe.
Alongside the Nerve vertical, which will focus predominantly on sex and being single, HowAboutWe Media will also include three other verticals: Swimmingly.com for couples, Famously.com for celebrities, and TheDateReport, centered around dating and being single. The DateReport has been around for a while as part of HowAboutWe, and will also get a fresh redesign as part of the deal.
Gawker’s Brian Moylan has been editing for TheDateReport, and will now take over as Editor and Chief of HowAboutMedia.
Swimmingly and Famously are brand new. Nerve, on the other hand, doesn’t bring with it a huge audience. Instead, it has a solid brand that has been hooking up sexy singles since 1997 as one of the first web-only magazines.
According to the press release, HowAboutWe has been working on the media network expansion for a while, with a plan to sell advertising across all of its properties, including the new media network and HowAboutWe Couples and HowAboutWe Dating. In total, HowAboutWe claims to have more than 16 million monthly visitors.
HowAboutWe has raised over $22 million in venture funding since launch in 2010, from investors like ff Venture Capital and Khosla Ventures.
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