Yet Another Social-Network Acquisition was in the news today as Global Defense Strategic Logistics (and doesn’t that sound a little bit like a paramilitary organization out of Command & Conquer?) announced its purchase of Redhedd.com, an online community for people with red hair.
… Yes, I’m serious. An online community for people with red-hair has been bought by a weapons manufacturer who makes red-tipped missiles. Red-hair, red-tipped missiles … get it? Well, apparently somebody at GDSL did, as they supposedly made Redhedd.com founder Steve Warrington "an offer he couldn’t refuse." (Possibly along the lines of "if you don’t sign everything you’ve got over to us, we’ll ram one of these warheads up your red-cheeked buttocks." But that’s baseless conjecture.)
But yeah. This has got to be one of the oddest acquisitions I’ve ever heard of. The main reasoning behind the purchase was GDSL’s desire to "put a friendlier face on their AT-600 series of ballistic missiles." One of their first steps post-acquisition, according to the press release, will include creating a user-profile for GDSL as well as for the long- and short-range missiles in the AT-600 line.
Hmm, maybe I’m just not thinking this through, but it’s hard to imagine an unfriendlier profile than a red-tipped ballistic missile. Just think about what its avatar and photo galleries would look like. And who the hell would add a missile to their friends list? (Ok, actually, it might be kinda cool to have The Death-Bringer writing you a testimonial …)
So none of this really made much sense to me until I started thinking about what GDSL was trying to accomplish, i.e., drum up awareness about their gear. Let’s say they bought Redhedd.com for US$10m … admittedly a bit on the high-side for something this small, but they’ve got deep, missile-shaped pockets so it’s possible. The cost of a handful of ballistic missiles would totally make that money back for them (when India built 20 long-range ballistic missiles in 2001, it cost their government US$150m; the math doesn’t get much clearer than that). So even if they only closed 1 deal as an (indirect) result of this social-network acquisition, it’s still money well-spent methinks.
And of course, there’s the Google effect, which undoubtedly will help their marketing efforts even more. People tend to write about odd business strategies, and I’m sure the amount of noise these guys are making within the blogosphere certainly doesn’t hurt either.