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Marching steadfastly toward its ambition of becoming one of the largest Internet companies, Zap on Monday said it agreed to buy the GoCollege site, its 25th acquisition in recent weeks.
With GoCollege, Zap will add virtual tours of college campuses, scholarship information, and practice SAT tests to its eclectic Internet directory. Since May, Zap has signed letters of intent to buy 25 other small sites, including women's career site Advancing Women, erotica community Bianca, and one of the Web’s first literary sites, Word.
Zap is a fascinating test case of how a new media company might be built. Its parent company Zapata (ZAP), which makes fish meal and sausage casing, is using its US$123 million in cash to buy its way into a sexy business. With high profile ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications, Zap is soliciting almost all Web sites.
A Zap press release claims that its collection of sites make Zap.com one of the most visited sites around. Media Metrix, an Internet traffic researcher, says the sites that Zap intends to buy had a 2.1 percent reach to home users, surveyed in May. That equals about 900,000 unique visitors, comparable to sites like ABCnews.com and Playboy.com.
"GoCollege.com does not show up on our radar," a spokeswoman for Media Metrix said via email. Same goes for about nine of the original 24 sites Zap targeted. Media Metrix reports over 8,000 sites every month, but "some sites have such low traffic that they do not show up in our ratings."
Zapata and GoCollege officials weren't immediately available to comment.
Whether the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole for Zap remains to be seen. LatinoLink, which agreed to be acquired by Zap last month, has yet to see dramatic traffic growth derived from its prominent position on Zap.com.
"You know how summer traffic is kinda funky," said Lavonne Luquis, president of LatinoLink. "There are some days we see traffic from Zap increase. They seem to be tied to specific announcements."
Zap has alluded to ambitious promotional campaigns for its site. It may disclose more of its strategy in a conference call with analysts on Thursday, when Zapata releases its earnings.
