The IAC owned College Humor has acquired satirical sports website Sportspickle.com for an undisclosed sum.

Sportspickle was established in 2001, and a book based on the fake columns was published in 2007. Content from the site has also been syndicated by ESPN, reports Paid Content.

Two things College Humor didn’t buy the site for: traffic and looks. Cough***OMG that’s ugly***Cough, and a traffic spread of Compete 8,700 people per month, Quantcast 11,000 and an Alexa rank of 444,000th.

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Online media company Internet Brands acquired four sites in the 4th quarter for a total cost of $2.8 million.

Some acquisitions have been previously announced, but the aggregate total is new information. The company also said in its 4th quarter and yearly results release (published at PaidContent) that it had made two small acquisitions this year, and was planning on announcing a new vertical at the end of the first quarter of 2009.

The 4th quarter acquisitions mark a slow down in acquisitions for Internet Brands, with the total number for 2008 coming in at 29 sites for a total cost of $62.6 million.

General interest in Internet Brands acquiring sites isn’t particularly high (they’re always acquiring sites), but it’s the type of sites they buy that should make them interesting to web publishers.

The four sites acquired in the fourth quarter, with their Alexa rank today were: CVTips.com (16,941), Groovejob.com (51,883), Steve’s Digicams (14,524) and SellMyCar.com (141,611).

Alexa isn’t always the best judge of a business, and the numbers here represent the figures today, not at acquisition (SellMyCars for example has improved since being acquired). However we can use them to note that none of these sites were top tier sites in terms of traffic, and indeed one was remarkably low. These are all mid-range acquisitions, but with a $2.8 million total price tag. I should add as well, most of these sites suffer in the aesthetics department as well and none were purchased for their looks.

Internet Brands is slowing down on acquisitions, but they are still buying, and that gives hope to mid-tier publishers that someone out there at least still values their sites. The chances of course of a white knight coming along and offering anyone a pile of cash for a site are slim, but the market still exists, and it exists beyond the top 100 or even top 10,000 sites online.

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Founded in 2005, MerchantCircle offers small businesses a web page listing, blogging and email newsletter application, and a local business network that focuses on connecting local businesses. The new “Instant Website” service allows local business owners to select a customized web address through the MerchantCircle platform and instantly create a website under that domain name. MerchantCircle provides all web hosting and content creation tools, with business information automatically pulled and updated from their MerchantCircle listing onto a separate website.

MerchantCircle doesn’t get a lot of coverage (perhaps business listings aren’t sexy enough) but the company is going gangbusters in terms of numbers. The site had 280,000 merchants and just 500 paying members at the start of the year, but today has passed 550,000 merchants and nearly 7,500 paying members. Traffic is at an all-time high: 8.3million uniques on 23 million pageviews per month. The company has taken two rounds totaling $14.1 million, and investors include Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Steamboat Ventures (Walt Disney), IAC and Square 1 Bank.

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Life123 — the company’s venture into the world of how-to web sites — is publicly accessible, though not being promoted, PC World reports. News of the project first broke back in April, when the site was rumored to be called Life333.com. That domain, incidentally, is still registered to IAC Search and Media, though it no longer points to IAC’s servers.

The newly numbered project features content organized into 11 main categories: Beauty & Style, Celebrations, Food & Drink, Health & Wellness, Home & Garden, Money, Parenting & Family, Relationships, Technology, Travel & Leisure, and Work. You can search for how-to-style material within any of those areas, bringing up articles on everything from writing thank you notes to breaking up with someone.

From eHow and WikiHow to more recent launches such as FindHow, there’s plenty of competition in the how-to space. IAC’s still-under-development offering aims to set itself apart with ample partner content — both in the form of IAC-owned sites and unrelated properties — and with more user-driven presentation options. Visitors can opt to receive content in long-form articles, short-form articles, or videos.

IAC doesn’t have a target date for a full launch as of yet — though it does have a conference call related to its second quarter earnings scheduled for Wednesday morning. IAC isn’t saying whether the call might include a first mention of the new site.

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The company has announced a $100 million drop for its lending division, which houses LendingTree.com. It’s also seeing a $70 million drop in its real estate sector, which includes RealEstate.com. IAC blames the bad housing market for the losses.

The company is still planning to break itself up into five separate and independent companies by the end of next month. IAC will handle the Ask.com sites. The other newly formed corporations will be in charge of lending and real estate, home shopping, ticketing, and time-share services.

IAC made headlines just a couple of months ago when it acquired Dictionary.com — adding that site, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com into its Ask arsenal — and then, a week later, bought out StarNet Interactive. StarNet ran the teen-targeted GirlSense site, which matched up nicely with IAC’s similarly teen-focused Zwinky service.

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The deal significantly increases Ringleader Digital’s direct publisher network to include some of the most popular web sites in North America.

Ringleader Digital’s mobile advertising network allows advertising agencies and direct brands to extend their digital advertising initiatives to mobile through a service that delivers ads by device functionality, not just device type. Advertisers purchasing inventory on mobile sites in the IAC/AS network will have their ads sent to the entire target demographic on any available mobile network, with ad format limitations.

Additional inventory will be made available to advertisers as IAC Ad Solutions continues to roll out its brands’ mobile sites throughout the year.

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IAC has acquired StarNet Interactive, most known for its GirlSense site aimed at young teens. The site offers girls the opportunity to “become part of a fashion community, enjoy dress up games, create [their] own fashions, and communicate safely via notes.” GirlSense boasts 13 million users.

IAC owns similarly themed Zwinky, making the new marriage a logical match.

“Part of our growth strategy includes acquisition of products and companies that complement our core competencies,” IAC executive John Park said in his announcement today.

“Adding Girlsense.com to our existing teen targeted product portfolio provides us with broader teen mindshare, and access to the coveted tween demographic.”

IAC acquired Dictionary.com in a deal completed just last week.

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