eBay invested $2 million in social networking company Meetup.com, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday.
The filing sheds more light on the scope of eBay's financial commitment to the company. Meetup released a statement last month revealing that a group of investors had taken a more than 10 percent stake in the company. eBay was listed among that investor group, but the size of the online auction giant's financial commitment was not disclosed at the time.
"While we do not believe that Mr. Omidyar had a direct or indirect material interest in this transaction, and thus it is not required to be disclosed, we are disclosing its existence as a matter of good corporate governance," the filing stated.
Last month, Meetup announced it had received investments from eBay, Omidyar Network, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Allen & Co., former Sen. Bill Bradley and Esther Dyson, which amounted to more than a 10 percent stake in the company, collectively. (Dyson is editor of Release 1.0, which is owned by News.com publisher CNET Networks).
Meetup provides an online forum for people to contact others who share their interests and then form groups to meet face-to-face. The social networking site competes with the likes of Friendster and Google's Orkut.com.
Google creates an animated doodle that features a boy, a girl, Google's search engine, and a jump rope. But might there be darker, more analytical, more troubling interpretations to this tale?
The Silicon Valley online payments startup grew by 1,000 percent last year and is hopeful it can repeat that level of growth this year. To do that, it's had to move away from its early friends-and-family roots and embrace small businesses.
Chamtech's spray-on antenna uses a nano material to provide a low-power boost to antenna range. The wireless-in-a-can product may some day bring an end to unsightly cell towers.
EnerG2 opens a plant to make an engineered carbon that will improve performance of energy storage devices and make storage for start-stop hybrid cars less expensive.
Join the conversation