MappingTheWeb //

I don’t know about you, but every time I read the headline “Company A buys Company B”, I immediately and instinctively click on the link. For example, when I scanned over my RSS feeds and saw that eBay had acquired StubHub, I had to find out more.

There is nothing more exciting or news-worthy than a buy-out. But why are we so intrigued by acquisitions? Why do we immediately want to delve deeper into the news of a take-over? Well, there are several reasons…

• People love reading about the success of the founders. Furthermore, people are extremely interested in how much money these entrepreneurs obtained from the deal. Everyone loves to see the underdog succeed. Others pull motivation from these success stories and visualize themselves achieving a similar fate. The ROI equation is always fascinating as well. For example… “The company only invested X thousand dollars and sold for Y millions dollars. That means they made Z times on their money!” It’s inspiring, refreshing, and enlightening.
• Other people click on the acquisition news to find out more about what the take-over company plans to do with its new purchase.The most curious observers are usually users of the company that got acquired. Everyone is always interested in how the integration process will occur. In many cases, integration is non-existant and the take-over company lets the little guy develop on his own. Sounds like a web 2.0 mutual fund.

Sites like TechCrunch and GigaOM thrive off acquisition news. Not only are they usually the first to learn of such news, but they’re also usually able to provide exclusive details and in-depth analysis. These sources and distributors usually get bombarded not only with direct traffic, but also link-backs and trackbacks.

Now if only I could get these exclusives… I’d be able to provide sexy, tantalizing RSS feed headings…mmmmm…