BizJournals Portfolio
Nov 29 2011 2:40pm EDT

Marijuana.com Sells for $4.20 Million...Really

Marijuana.com merges forces with WeedMaps and the Ganjaverse gets a bit smaller.

Imagine if Yelp acquired Facebook, except for potheads. Well, that just happened.

General Cannabis, Inc., the current owner of WeedMaps.com, just paid $4.20 million for Marijuana.com and the contents of the site, according to TechCrunch.

“By integrating Marijuana.com with WeedMaps.com, we can monetize both properties more efficiently,” said Justin Hartfield, chief Web officer of WeedMaps.

Marijuana.com is currently a bulletin board forum for everything ranging from how not to get caught to “420 Dating,” and, according to a statement released by General Cannabis, it attracts 3.5 million page views per month, on average. Launched in 1995, the site now boasts 300,000 users.

WeedMaps.com, on the other hand, claims to offer a database of “legal”marijuana dispensaries. Per the release, the site receives 10 million page views per month and earns as much as $400,000 monthly, according to TechCrunch.

Doug Francis, president of General Cannabis, must have been thinking of the effects of the site’s namesake when he said, “Well-established, premium top-level-domains such as Marijuana.com are easy to remember.” He said the site's high ranking in Google searches will attract "thousands of visitors per day in type-in traffic alone."

General Cannabis says the merger is scheduled to take place in early January 2012.

The company currently trades on the OTCQX market. They declined to comment for this article due to restrictions related to their pending S-1 filing with the SEC. The company reported consolidated gross revenues of $7,699,634 for 2010, up from $2,670,721 in 2009.


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Michael del Castillo is a freelance reporter for Portfolio.com.

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