Time, Inc. has acquired women-focused lifestyle site Hello Giggles, Inc. for a figure around $20-$30 million.

The terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, however, The Wall Street Journal puts the figure at “in the range of $20 million” whereas The Hollywood Report puts it at “around $30 million.”

Founded in 2011 by TV producer Sophia Rivka Rossi, former Gawker Blogger Molly McAleer and actress Zooey Deschanel, the site initially pitched itself as a sort of female Funny or Die before shifting to its current model that covers female empowerment, style, relationships, friendship, careers, and “issues that matter most to young women’s lives.”

With its millennial focus, the site allows contributions from readers, particularly encouraging teen readers to share their views on the topics of the day, in at times what would appear to be “earthy” style prose and yet other times more Buzzfeed like, complete with the occasional animated gif and funny animal.

The site had 11 million unique visitors in the United States in September, up from 721,000 in September 2013 according to comScore stats, resulting in a reasonable ranking of 1,957 on Alexa globally, and 570 in the United States.

Advertising for the site has previously been sold under a deal with People Magazine that saw the famous glossy gossip rag bundle advertising on the site with similar sites in package deals.

Under the deal, the site is being folded into Time Inc.’s People and Entertainment Weekly group, but will continue to operate independently in Los Angeles.

Blowing bubbles

The buy comes at a time of increased interest in online media properties particularly from legacy publishers who are looking to beef up their online portfolios.

Eighty-eight percent of Business Insider was acquired by German publisher Axel Springer SA for $442 million in September, and NBCUniversal recently invested in both BuzzFeed and Vox Media.

Given some of these recent deals and even valuations on venture capital rounds, the acquisition price for Hello Giggle is arguably on the lower side of what prices are being valued at in 2015, but likewise it’s still an awful lot of money for a site that at least at face value isn’t anything particularly special compared to the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar woman-focused lifestyle sites out there; it can only be presumed that a combination of solid traffic and decent advertising revenue drove up the acquisition price as sites like these are nearly always considered in multiple of revenue.

Prior to acquisition Hello Giggles had raised one seed round (amount undisclosed) in September 2014 from Third Wave Digital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital and Michael Pierce.

It’s not clear from reports when the deal will close.

Image credit: bouche/Flickr/CC by 2.0