Pierre Far, Cli.gs‘ founder, announced yesterday that the URL-shortener service has been acquired by Mister Wong, a German-based social bookmarking website.
Mister Wong has been incorporated in early 2009, after starting operations in 2006 as part of the media agency construktiv. Since then, this bookmark service has been growing extensively expecially in its home market, reaching (according to the Alexa rankings) the top 80 most visited German websites and awarded by google with a PR 9. Mister Wong is not new to acquisitions: in January 2007 it acquired Taggle, another german-based social-bookmarking machine, offering its users the possibility to migrate to Mister Wong’s services.
Yesterday’s acquisition is a relief for cli.gs’ users, who were expecting the service shutdown by October 25th. URL-shorteners have proliferated pulled by the microblogging wave, but in many cases turned out not to be profitable; “How much revenue does Cligs earn? Consider it zero” is what Pierre Far explains. Same thing for other URL-shorteners, suffering for the lack of a viable business model. Mister Wong’s Kai Tietjen might have considered cli.gs’ ancillary services, included geo-analytics, and ensured the continuation of the service.
