“This is a great opportunity to take CCI to the next level,” stated Ben Sun, President of Community Connect. “Radio One reaches over 20 million people every week in radio, TV, print and online giving us the opportunity to capitalize on cross-platform opportunities for our brands that will truly benefit our members and advertisers.”

Community Connect Inc. (CCI), the parent company of BlackPlanet.com, GLEE.com, MiGente.com, and AsianAve.com has been acquired by Radio One. The price for all of the social networks combined was $38 million. Radio One is a radio broadcasting network company with an African-American demographic. BlackPlanet is Community Connect’s more popular social network.

As a matter of fact, BlackPlanet.com was named the largest multicultural niche social networking site of 2007. BlackPlanet was also ranked the 4th largest social networking site after MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo according to Hitwise.

Community Connect recently celebrated their 10th anniversary. The company was founded by Ben Sun, Calvin Wong, Peter Chen, and Michael Montero.

Given Black Planet’s membership size, I’m surprised that they didn’t hold out for more money. But then again, sometimes you have to accept what you can get and see what happens from there. Who knows where MySpace would be right now if they didn’t accept the undervalued News Corp. acquisition price?

Information Source:
[1] Radio One Press Release (via Trading Markets): Radio One, Inc. Announces the Acquisition of Social Media Network Community Connect Inc.

Community Connect Inc. (CCI) is the first multicultural-focused social networking company.  Today I found out that CCI is celebrating their 10 year anniversary this summer.

Some of the social networks that CCI has powered under their leadership includes BlackPlanet.com (African American focused), MiGente.com (Latino focused), AsianAve.com (Asian focused), GLEE.com (GLBT focused), and Faithbase.com (Christian focused).  According to Comscore, Community Connect’s social networks are the 5th largest U.S. social network property based on pageviews.

Community Connect was founded by Benjamin Sun, Calvin Wong, Peter Chen, and Michael Montero.  Between the aforementioned social networks, Community Connect accounts for 19 million members.  All of those members have access to various Community Connect sponsors such as Monster Worldwide’s 30,000+ corporate customers.

BlackPlanet alone accounts for 16.5 million members and had 80 million page views in June 2007.  Hitwise ranks BlackPlanet at #5 behind sites like MySpace and Facebook.

It is compelling to see how dedicated certain communities have been with their social networks of choice even 10 years later.  I plan on interviewing Benjamin Sun sometime soon to see what the future holds for Community Connect since there is fierce competition out there and curious about their strategy on how to maintain their marketshare.