Accoona, the highly suspect New Jersey based search/electronics retailer, has
suffered what might be its final disgrace - the closure of it’s last business, Twing.
The company, which offered a search product, has a rich history. Founder Marc Armand Rousso has a
shady
past involving stock fraud, and former President Bill Clinton was a spokesperson for the
company.
Most of Accoona’s $137 million/year in revenue came from distributing electronics after
buying
a number of retailers in Brooklyn. In 2007 they canceled a planned IPO, and the Accoona search
business was sold to Masterseek, a
Danish company, last month.
The company said in
April they were deprioritizing all of their businesses except Twing, a forum search engine. But
the Twing website is now offline, and a tipster says the technology is being sold.
Twing, which appears to be a separate corporate entity from Accoona, was said to be pitching for
a small round of financing in the last few months at a valuation of $8 million.
The service had a surge in traffic this last spring, drawing, according to
Compete, a peak of about 1.5 million unique monthly visitors. But much (or all) of that
traffic was driven by advertising spends, says a source, and they struggled to get repeat
visitors.
We’ve contacted Accoona and Twing and await a response.
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