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Is FiLife Running On Borrowed Time?

Less than two months after talking up the turnaround at Dow Jones-IAC (NSDQ: IACI) personal finance JV FiLife, paidContent has learned the site’s continued existence is no certainty. It survived the multiple trimmings as Barry Diller cut back on IAC’s portfolio of emerging businesses, but the company is now exploring options that range from leaving it open to a sale or a full shut down. When Ezra Kucharz, president and GM for just over a year, left for CBS (NYSE: CBS) in January, both IAC and DJ credited him publicly with turning around the site and building it to the #4 personal finance site with 4.4 million unique visitors in December. Now both companies are declining comment about the site’s future.

One possibility for IAC could be selling its stake to Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS), which recently bought out SmartMoney partner Hearst. But that’s a well-established brand with an 800,000-circ magazine. Whether DJ would even want to own FiLife outright is unclear—as is whether a deal actually would involve much money. What FiLife does have—more traffic than SmartMoney.com, where personal finance is just one category, and a digital mentality. Is there a way to combine the two?

FiLife has had a bit of a tortured life from its beginning: taking more than a year to move from an idea to a blog, then taking so long to emerge from that status the plans appeared to be dormant. Dave Kansas, brought in from the Wall Street Journal to launch the site, was replaced by online vet Kucharz in late 2008. Adam Wiener, executive editor and VP-content was promoted to GM when Kucharz left, but not given the title of president.

It’s made strides on the editorial side. Just last month FastCompany picked it as the most innovative company in the finance area for using “a Q&A format with a host of social and game-like features to get Americans talking about money. More as warranted—and please feel free to e-mail me if you have details.

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Staci D. Kramer
@sdkstl Mar 19, 2010 11:15 PM ET

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Posted In: Features, Exclusive, Media & Publishing, Online News, Companies, IAC, News Corp., Dow Jones

  • i agree that there are waaay too many pedo there…but youre going to find pedos on any wap/web site
    and i agree that mocos ripping stuff from other social networks…ivent been a big fan of their recent re-vamp making the site look sooo much like myspace..its rediculous…tho the instant messaging is cool..it is also a rip from prodigits…

    but still its guna be my fav chat site…been there prolly close to 3 years now…

  • smilebren1

    i love it.im addictive to it.

  • mocospace have riped off meny WAP / WEB based social networks in the Passed (prodigits.co.uk) (dejavuwap.com) it is mayhem 2 think that they are geting so big fron riping and hacking other ppls hard work i personally have had my sacial network hacked by thier owners and hav my codeing work the used long wiv other site codeing like prodigits ,my space and others

  • tif

    moco is awosome

  • emi

    ive been a member of mocospace for, i think, two years now. i personally love it and im obsessed lol its pretty fun if you know who to avoid. definitely to many perverts (as posted above) !!

  • Mil

    The owners Jamie and Justin have to do something about it quick before the mayhem begins!

  • Mil

    Too many pedafiles on mocospace recently.

  • Craig

    Boogernews.net - unhealthly obsessed with picking my nose.

    But in all seriousness. Mocospace is a great service and is not centered around mobile content like the name sounds. I personally would never use a WAP based social network unless I was on a blazing 3G phone. Perhaps these networks will become more popular with the mainstream when that happens.

  • I always avoided writing here what "moco" means in Spanish, to avoid making Rafat sad. Hope he took it well… :)

  • Mojo

    I remember when they were copying zedge.net so I guess they are another wannabe clone that found someone to bite.

  • 'MocoNews',  'MocoSpace' pretty easy to mistake one for the other.
    Could there be a fight for the name in the future?

  • Its funny that so much of their population is Hispanic considering that 'Moco' means booger in spanish

Unhealthily Obsessed With Mobile Content | mocoNews Newsletter

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