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Kaboodle, the social shopping site that looked like a better fit for eBay than a media conglomerate, has been acquired by Hearst Corporation for an undisclosed amount. Kaboodle had taken $5 million in first round funding from 10 investors including Ron Conway.
It's another surprise acquisition of a forgotten startup by an old-school media company: Clipmarks, while not yet officially bought by Forbes, appears to be closing the deal with them.
Like many bookmarking sites, Kaboodle was founded in 2005 as a place to save images and links. Realizing the profits lay with bookmarking products, perhaps, it quickly began to focus on social shopping and peer recommendations. StyleHive and ThisNext work on a similar principle. The site had quietly grown to 250,000 users.
Hearst wants to build pages within Kaboodle featuring products from women's magazines like Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, and also build the site into more of a lifestyle portal. No doubt other social shopping and bookmarking sites will now become acquisition targets as media companies try to get in on the web clipping trend.
Update: We're told the price was in the $40 million range. Gigaom reports similar. Seems like a nice exit.
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