After one abortive fling and a long and fractious courtship, gay media titans PlanetOut Inc (PlanetOut.com and gay.com) and LPI Media (Advocate.com, OUT Magazine) have agreed to merge. Interestingly, it will be a merger between corporate cultures as well. PNO is based in frigid San Francisco (obligatory disclosure: I used to be on the Board of Directors of Planetout, LLC but I have no financial interest or holdings in the company at this time) while LPI is based down here in warm Southern California. The corporate cultures are reflective of the climes in which the companies are based.
The two companies are also about the same size, with PNO being slightly bigger right now with 152 employees to LPI's 133. PlanetOut had 5.4 million visitors in October 2005 to its gay portals and LPI delivered 8.2 million magazines. When the companies first discussed merging in 1999 the deal was compared to the Time-Warner AOL mega-merger. We all know how well that turned out. It should be interesting to see how the editorial content of the magazines, particularly the Advocate newsmagazine is impacted. Long features about the joys of online dating perhaps? :-)
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