CrowdGather Expands in Hosted Forum Market with Lefora Acquisition

Online forum network provider CrowdGather will acquire the technical assets from Lefora, a San Francisco- based company that has made it possible for any online user to create their own forum in under a minute. The acquisition will consolidate Woodland Hills-based CrowdGather’s market leadership in the hosted forum market. The CrowdGather network combined with Lefora’s hosted forum properties will offer a search engine and social media-friendly network of forum communities that serves over 90 million monthly pageviews. The acquisition is an all-stock transaction, with key employees of Lefora working with CrowdGather’s team for the technical integration. Lefora has built up a user base of over 100,000 forum communities since launching in 2008. The company offers a simple user experience allowing less technical people to start their own community with a form-based editor in order to set up a forum that is also enabled for social media and search engine optimization. CrowdGather’s community of forum owners will now have access to features offered by Lefora such as weekly newsletters, the ability to embed media from third-party services like Flickr, YouTube, and Talki and Search Engine Optimization for driving new traffic.