IAC-owned local guide network Citysearch is expanding its local listings ad service CityGrid through a partnership with search marketer OrangeSoda. Citysearch is also providing an investment in Utah-based OrangeSoda, the amount of which is undisclosed. The move is part of a more aggressive effort by Citysearch to attract more ad…

Match.com’s Thursday announcement that it had purchased Singlesnet was notable for its upfrontness; the company acknowledged that Singlesnet’s traffic is “currently in decline”—something it said it hoped to turn around. Turns out, however, that much of the online dating industry is in a traffic slump. comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) figures show…

IAC’s Match.com is making another acquisition—this time buying up Singlesnet, which as of January was the 11th largest dating site in the world by unique visitors. In a release, Match.com describes the deal as “more of a value acquisition than a strategic one” and notes that Singlesnet’s traffic is on…

Branded advertising veteran Laura Caraccioli-Davis is leaving her long-held perch at Publicis Group’s Starcom Entertainment to join the Ben Silverman-headed IAC unit Electus, Ad Age reports. Silverman left NBC last July to form Electus as a branded entertainment venture with IAC (NSDQ: IACI). The company recently struck a strategic partnership…

In case you didn’t get it the first few times, yes, IAC (NSDQ: IACI) Chairman and CEO Barry Diller still believes the search market will consolidate—and no, he isn’t trying to make it happen. He told analysts on the Q4 IAC earnings call: “I don’t know what form that consolidation…

IAC (NSDQ: IACI) bit an accounting bullet in Q4, taking a $991 million impairment charge for its search & media business—including Ask and excluding Citysearch. Without that after-tax charge and an unrelated write down for $12.2 million, IAC would have turned in earnings per share of $.20, an 88 percent…

A little more than a year after joining FiLife as president and general manger, Ezra Kucharz is leaving to become president of CBS (NYSE: CBS) Local Digital Media. FiLife is the personal finance joint venture between IAC (NSDQ: IACI) and Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS)—and both credit Kucharz with turning around…

It’s taken nearly a year, but the U.S. Department of Justice has given the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation (NYSE: LYV). The new entity will be called Live Nation Entertainment. In addition to securing the go-ahead from the DOJ, the two ticket sales and events promoters have gotten the…

Just as one of his last moves at NBC—moving Jay Leno to prime time—starts to publicly unravel, Ben Silverman has the first deal for his new venture with IAC (NSDQ: IACI), Electus: a strategic partnership with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) to develop and produce exclusive original content. So far, sounds like…

IAC (NSDQ: IACI)—the gift that keeps on giving. Barry Diller’s latest fine-tuning involves renaming a couple of reporting segments and re-slotting online invite business Evite, according to an SEC filing. The Media & Advertising section, which includes Ask.com and Citysearch, is now known as “Search” while Emerging Businesses has been…

IAC (NSDQ: IACI) has appointed Slide media business GM Shravan Goli to head up its Dictionary.com online reference business, which also includes Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. Goli is replacing Doug Leeds, who was named president of Ask.com in the U.S. in October; Leeds had led Dictionary.com in the aftermath of IAC’s…

Now branching out in to e-books after recently marking its first birthday, Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is starting to syndicate its webzine content out through third-party destinations. The IAC-backed current affairs zine has just inked deals to publish through MSN in the U.S. and UK, with further agreements with Yahoo…

The rush to incorporate real-time status updates has even hit IAC’s Citysearch. Starting today, business owners will be able to create and manage their Twitter accounts directly from a Citysearch page. A restaurant, bar or health clubs’ most recent three tweets will show up alongside their ratings, reviews and other…

The Daily Beast has named publishing vet Stephen Colvin as the site’s first president. Colvin has left his post as an EVP of CNET after two years. He was previously president and CEO of lad mag purveyor Dennis Publishing for 11 years. In his new post, he’ll handle all aspects…

Notional wants to be taken seriously. That might be a little tough ordinarily for a new cross-platform video production company birthed by a website called CollegeHumor but Notional has great genes and, in Barry Diller, a godfather with serious pull. It also has a very real slate with production commitments…

Joey Levin moves from corporate M&A and finance to CEO of Mindspark Interactive Network, the IAC collection of “fun web products” like Zwinky, succeeding John Park, who wants a more entrepreneurial life after a decade with IAC (NSDQ: IACI). Levin was SVP for M&A and finance. On the M&A side,…

Jordan Hoffner, the head of content partnerships for YouTube, is leaving the company, and joining Ben Silverman’s new content venture at IAC (NSDQ: IACI), we have learned. The move from YouTube was announced internally today. This is the second senior digital exec to join Silverman’s venture, after we first reported…

Updated: Don’t think big thoughts when you look at that $1.8 billion-plus in IAC’s bank account: Barry Diller is sticking to his guns when it comes to major acquisitions. He told analysts during the Q3 earnings call that he’s more inclined to repatriate the money through buybacks, not through M&A…

Another profitable quarter for IAC (NSDQ: IACI) (that’s two in a row) aided by $35 million in gains from the sale OpenTable shares and Match Europe, and by lower corporate costs compared to the spinoff numbers last year. Even without the gains, IAC still beat the Thomson First Call consensus…