Why is USA Interactive doing well? Well, they’re not trying to establish synergy among their properties. And they are all in a business that works well on the Web: bringing people together and making markets. Their properties include Expedia, Hotels.com, Match.com, Ticketmaster (which includes CitySearch). No wonder they’re smug.
OK, so there’s a lot of synergy between Expedia and Hotels.com. Real we’re-in-the-same-business synergy.
Some of the markets they’re interested in include [online] classified [ads], financial services, and we’ve looked at real estate. Rumored takeoever targets include Google, Overture, Cruise.com, MovieFone (now part of AOL’s synergistic house of cards), and Overstock.com.