United Online, Inc. was an independent

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (l ...

formed by the 2001

merger Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

NetZero NetZero is an Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, commun ...

and

Juno Online Services Juno Online Services, also called simply Juno, is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It originated as a free email service and later expanded its offerings. Juno is a subsidiary of United Online, which in turn is a subsidia ...

. It is currently a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

of investment bank B. Riley Financial. The company's range of products and services has evolved significantly since its inception as a provider of dial-up Internet access. This has been aided by a series of acquisitions that have included Classmates Online (2004), MyPoints (2006), and FTD Group, Inc. (2008), the latter of which was spun off as its own company in 2013. United Online is headquartered in Woodland Hills,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The company claims to have more than 100 million registered accounts. The company’s Content & Media segment provides networking services and products (Classmates and StayFriends). Its primary communications segment services are internet access, and services and devices (NetZero and Juno). United Online operates through a global network of locations in the U.S., Germany, and India. On July 1, 2016, B. Riley Financial completed its acquisition of United Online for $11.00 per share in a transaction valued at approximately $170 million.

History

United Online, Inc. was formed in June 2001 by the merger of Internet service providers

and

. The two merged companies were to be independent subsidiaries of United Online, and the resultant company was the United States' second largest internet service provider at the time. In November 2013, United Online spun off its floral delivery subsidiary, FTD, which became a separate NASDAQ-traded company called

FTD Companies FTD LLC (FTD), also known as Florists' Transworld Delivery, is a floral wire service, retailer and wholesaler based in Downers Grove, Illinois, in the United States. FTD was founded as Florists' Telegraph Delivery in 1910, to help customers send ...

, Inc., under the symbol FTD. Directly following the spin-off of FTD, long time CEO Mark Goldston, who had been with the company for 14 years, taken it public and presided over the acquisitions and growth, left the company. Francis Lobo, who had spent 10 years with AOL, eventually rising to the position of president of AOL Services, was selected to take Goldston's place as CEO. The company continued to struggle, and Lobo eventually resigned. Following Lobo's exit, the investment bank B. Riley Financial acquired the remnants of UOL on July 1, 2016, naming Robert J. Taragan the new CEO of the subsidiary. In April 2016, United Online sold MyPoints to El Segundo, California-based loyalty program marketer

Prodege Prodege, formally Prodege LLC, is an American online marketing, consumer polling, and market research company based in El Segundo, California. The company develops consumer rewards and polling programs under various brands including Swagbucks, ...

Products

Faced with the introduction and rapid expansion of broadband Internet-access services, United Online has diversified its products and service offerings, both via acquisitions and by evolving its current brands.

ISP

In September 2007, NetZero launched its first broadband access service, NetZero

DSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...

. In May 2008, it launched Juno DSL. Together, NetZero DSL and Juno DSL provided almost 30 percent of United Online’s ISP customers, and provided those customers with the ability to upgrade to broadband while maintaining their NetZero or Juno email addresses.

Mobile broadband

In March 2012, NetZero expanded into the wireless Internet access market with the debut of NetZero Mobile Broadband, a value-priced mobile broadband service using the Clearwire network. NetZero Mobile Broadband was available in over 80 cities, and allowed subscribers to choose from four monthly data plans. It also offered a one-year free trial with the purchase of a NetZero Connection device. NetZero Mobile Broadband has since rolled out the service across the nationwide using the Sprint 3G network, expanding its coverage to more than 276 million people. NetZero also offers a Home Wireless Broadband service which is intended to provide limited wireless access in the home or office. In 2013, it debuted NetZero DataShield, a personal

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

which encrypts and protects users’ data when they connect to the Internet via any WiFi connection, including public WiFi hubs.

Mobile phone

At the end of 2014, UOL rolled out a mobile phone service to their NetZero brand. The service provides 3G coverage, and features refurbished equipment (such as an

iPhone 4 The iPhone 4 is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the fourth generation of the iPhone lineup, succeeding the iPhone 3GS and preceding the 4S. Following a number of notable leaks, the iPhone 4 was first unvei ...

or Samsung

Galaxy SIII The Samsung Galaxy S III (or Galaxy S3) is an Android smartphone designed, developed, and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Launched in 2012, it had sold more than 80 million units overall, making it the most sold phone in the S series. I ...

for the price of $199 each) and limited monthly data.

Classmates.com

United Online's Classmates subsidiary began digitizing high school yearbooks in 2010, giving members the ability to view more than 30,000 high school yearbooks at Classmates.com. The Classmates Yearbook Initiative has since grown to over 250,000 yearbooks.

References

External links

* {{Dot-com Bubble Companies based in Los Angeles 2016 mergers and acquisitions