Ziff Davis snaps up Toolbox.com to target IT community

IT, HR sharing site is the latest addition for publisher after Geek.com, PCmag.com sites

In a bid to service the IT community, Ziff Davis, the digital media publisher that operates PCmag.com and Geek.com, which has been on an acquisition spree in the last year, has snapped up yet another company: Toolbox.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the company statement released Tuesday.

The social networking and knowledge-sharing website, Toolbox.com, has accumulated more than 2.3 million registered members since its inception in 1998 and has become a popular destination for IT, HR and finance professionals to share tips and advice for business.

Ziff Davis Inc., which was acquired and relaunched as a digital-only media publishing company by Vivek Shah and Great Hill Partners in June 2010, counts Toolbox.com as the fourth acquisition in the past year.

Essentially, Toolbox.com enables users to evaluate vendors, plan and manage projects, solve problems and stay current on must-know tech trends.

As of Tuesday, Toolbox.com will be the newest unit unit of Ziff Davis B2B Focus.

“We’ve added a critical piece to our puzzle with the acquisition of Toolbox.com,” said Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, in a statement. “The IT community relies on itself to make decisions and be informed."

The Corporate Executive Board was represented by DeSilva + Phillips, a New York-based investment bank specializing in media, marketing and information companies, in its divestiture of Toolbox.com.

Thanks to recent acquisitions (including PCMag.com, ExtremeTech.com, Geek.com and now Toolbox.com), Ziff Davis now reaches more than 50 million highly engaged in-market buyers and influencers every month. None of the details on price of purchase were available for any of the acquisitons.

Ziff Davis also operates BuyerBase, the most advanced ad targeting platform focused on tech buyers and LogicBuy.com, an outlet of deals and discounts on tech products. 

The reigning CEO of Ziff Davis is Steve Weitzner. Since 1977, Weitzner has been a publishing mainstay and was an editor for Hearst Business Communications in the late 70s and have continued in the field since.

This purchase of Toolbox.com is just the latest in a series of companies snapping up online content creators and the monetizing models that help them. In October, Federated Media Publishing acquired the advertising solutions and analytics company Lijit Networks.

Federated Media approached Lijit about the deal in May, the month after Lijit closed $10 million in its fifth financing round, which brought its total raised to $27 million.