By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

TechCrunch and GigaOM are running rumors that video sharing site Metacafe will be sold for some hundreds of millions of dollars, anywhere from $200 million to $700 million. Ynet says the deal is done for $200mn.

Way too much for an also-ran video sharing site? Opinions differ. Mashable says "they'd be stupid to sell for $200 million," given that YouTube went for $1.65 billion.

But VC Fred Destin crunches the numbers and thinks the two to three number sounds spot on.

Metacafe must have about 15M Real Uniques in total, judging by the PV numbers.
A UMV is worth somewhere between $50 (YHOO) and $16 (CNET). YouTube was $23 / UMV at the time of acquisition.
And Metacafe is not growing so no premium for growth
Metacafe has less reach than YouTube in all markets
So $250-300M sounds like the right range

Some rumors say Yahoo is the buyer. They must be in talks with everyone. That's always a safe bet. Which brings up the question of whether Yahoo is still spreading peanut butter. A few comments from TechCrunch:

Wow, buying a video sharing service. How Web 2.0 and original thinking on Yahoo’s part. Is the typical Yahoo executive day’s spent just watching what Google’s going to do and then try it out?

Let’s hope Yahoo doesn’t snap it up; that would suggest that all of their peanut butter memos and internal shuffling is just please-the-shareholder window dressing - not actually meaningful change.