H2P INC Company Blog Provided by H2Pronto

This is a great exit for Zappos’ investors, including Sequoia Capital and Venture Frogs, who put in about $60 million in seven rounds.

This isn’t just one of those times when companies say the management will stay and the company will be run independently. People close to the company say Zappos has long struggled with its desire to build a company for the long term and pressures to deliver a return for investors. This deal appears to be the best of both worlds. The way it’s described to employees, it’s less an acquisition and more a swap in shareholders.

I’m digging around for details now but here’s a video Jeff Bezos did that just went to Zappos employees. The post by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is here. In a letter to employees he writes:

We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos — continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different.

The newest Web Trend map has been posted!  This is a map, made by Information Architects and is done in the style of a Tokyo Metro map which points out the traffic, revenues, and trends on the web.  Every year one is made, the most recent version, 4th one in total (BIG VERSION 6740 x 4768), "maps the 333 most influential web domains and the 111 most [influential] Internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue withe map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenuse, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the character of each. For example, Twitter is located in Shibuya this year, as Shibuya is the spot with biggest buzz."

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