Archive for acquisitions

Report: Yahoo Will Announce Acquisition of Tumblr Tomorrow

May 19, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

yahoo, email, internet, marissa mayer,Yahoo’s board met today and agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, according to AllThingsD.

The company was quickly targeted by incoming CEO Marissa Mayer as a larger acquisition target, according to AllThingsD reports. The Sunnyvale, California-based media company sees Tumblr as a way to play to its strengths while also appealing to the younger audiences Tumblr attracts.

Tumblr founder David Karp will reportedly stay on at Yahoo with say-so over the fast-growing blogging platform.

Neither Yahoo nor Tumblr would confirm the deal, but a Yahoo press event is set for tomorrow afternoon in New York City, where Tumblr has its offices.

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Category: acquisitions, David Karp, Marissa Mayer, News, tumblr /

Twitter Continues Big Data Shopping Spree With Lucky Sort Acquisition

May 13, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

twitter acquires lucky sort, social networks, big dataTwitter has acquired the big data company Lucky Sort, the second big data company it has bought in recent weeks.

Portland, Oregon-based Lucky Sort built natural language data-mining and -visualization tools. The company partnered with StockTwits, for example, to generate visualizations of market intelligence.

In the next few months, Lucky Sort will shutter its products. Most of the staff, including CEO Noah Pepper, will join Twitter’s San Francisco HQ.

“In building Lucky Sort we had an enormous amount of support from friends, employees, advisors and investors. It has been uplifting to have so many people help us and it highlighted just how much business is a social endeavor,” Pepper said in a statement.

Last week, Twitter acquired Ubalo, which built products “to make large-scale computing easier and more accessible.”

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Category: acquisitions, big data, lucky sort, News, noah pepper, twitter, Ubalo /

Yahoo: We Also Bought Loki Studios

May 10, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

yahoo, loki studios, mobile apps, acquisitions, yahoo acquired loki studios, mobile gamesIn a tweet this afternoon, Yahoo revealed that it had grown its mobile team by 22 employees and four startup acquisitions this month.

Wait four?

That’s right, in addition to Astrid, MileWise and GoPollGo, the lumbering Internet giant bought Loki Studios.

The Palo Alto-based mobile gaming company, whose major game is Geomon, has a eight-person staff, most of whom are Stanford alumni. It appears all but the UX designer (and sole woman) will make the move to Yahoo.

“We are thrilled to be joining the exceptional folks at Yahoo!. We believe fully in their commitment to creating outstanding mobile products. We are excited to learn from, work with, and contribute to one of the most well-known pioneers of the tech industry,” Loki said.

 

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, Astrid, gopollgo, loki studios, Milewise, Mobile Games, News, Yahoo /

Salesforce Acquires Clipboard, Will Shut it Down June 30

May 9, 2013 / Devon Glenn / No comments

Clipboard has been acquired by Salesforce, the company announced today. Following the sale, Clipboard CEO Dr. Gary Flake will join Salesforce as VP of Engineering at the company’s Seattle headquarters. The web clipping service will be discontinued June 30.

See full announcement, addressed to Clipboard users, below:

“We have some bittersweet news. We are extremely happy to announce that salesforce.com has signed an agreement to acquire Clipboard, allowing us to pursue our mission of saving and sharing the Web on a much larger scale. But at the same time we’re also sad to see this stage of our adventure come to an end, especially since it means that our relationship with you, our users, will irreversibly change. The Clipboard service at clipboard.com will be discontinued on June 30, 2013.

But we have your backs. If you want it, all of your data will be preserved into a personal archive from which you can view your clips and boards offline. And if you want your clips destroyed, we can handle that as well. All of the details for what comes next are in the FAQ and some more personal reflections are on our blog.

Members of Clipboard’s engineering and design team will also join salesforce at its Seattle headquarters.

In nearly two years, 140,000 of you created nearly 3 million clips while over a million of you interacted with them. Thank you for joining us on this journey. We will dearly miss seeing all of you on Clipboard, but we hope you’ll support us in the next leg of our journey.

Best,
The Clipboard Team”

The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, clipboard acquired, News, salesforce /

Salesforce Acquires Clipboard, Will Shut it Down June 30

May 9, 2013 / Devon Glenn / No comments

Clipboard has been acquired by Salesforce, the company announced today. Following the sale, Clipboard CEO Dr. Gary Flake will join Salesforce as VP of Engineering at the company’s Seattle headquarters. The web clipping service will be discontinued June 30.

See full announcement, addressed to Clipboard users, below:

“We have some bittersweet news. We are extremely happy to announce that salesforce.com has signed an agreement to acquire Clipboard, allowing us to pursue our mission of saving and sharing the Web on a much larger scale. But at the same time we’re also sad to see this stage of our adventure come to an end, especially since it means that our relationship with you, our users, will irreversibly change. The Clipboard service at clipboard.com will be discontinued on June 30, 2013.

But we have your backs. If you want it, all of your data will be preserved into a personal archive from which you can view your clips and boards offline. And if you want your clips destroyed, we can handle that as well. All of the details for what comes next are in the FAQ and some more personal reflections are on our blog.

Members of Clipboard’s engineering and design team will also join salesforce at its Seattle headquarters.

In nearly two years, 140,000 of you created nearly 3 million clips while over a million of you interacted with them. Thank you for joining us on this journey. We will dearly miss seeing all of you on Clipboard, but we hope you’ll support us in the next leg of our journey.

Best,
The Clipboard Team”

The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, clipboard acquired, News, salesforce /

Spotify Acquires Tunigo Discovery App

May 3, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

spotify acquires tunigo, music apps, social media, social networks, Spotify has acquired Tunigo, a Swedish startup that builds a popular Spotify music-discovery app, the company confirmed today.

(The deal was first reported by AllThingsD.)

Spotify declined to say whether those apps would be shut down. But the Tunigo staff will stay on as part of Spotify.

“We are excited to add their music discovery expertise to the team over here,” said Graham James, a spokesman for Spotify.

Tunigo’s app was one of the first to launch with Spotify as a platform. Users can launch Tunigo from within Spotify, but it’s also available as a free-standing app for iOS or Android.

Spotify, while highly valued by investors, has worked to improve its discovery features.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, Graham James, Music apps, News, Spotify, tunigo /

With Wavii Acquisition, Google Continues to Look for Innovation in Search

April 26, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

google acquires waviiGoogle has acquired Seattle-based start-up Wavii and is shutting down its service, the companies said today.

The move signals that Google is continuing to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to search and aggregation, according to Ezra Gotthiel, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research.

Wavii’s app, launched in 2009, used natural language engines to compile information from around the Web into stories modeled on the Facebook feed. It also personalized the stories it serves up to each user based on his or her Facebook likes.

“We’re impressed by the Wavii team’s progress in understanding natural language and we look forward to working with them at Google,” a Google spokesperson said.

Wavii also emphasized natural language.

“[W]e’ll be using our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world,” said Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun.

Gotthiel thought Google could take Wavii’s technology in a few different directions. Natural language work lines up nicely with Google’s voice recognition technology, potentially helping beef out voice search. Google also continues to work on personalizing search results, even as it’s shuttering the iGoogle personalized home page.

“It could be a substitute for that. It may emerge as a new product or it may be embedded into their search” or News aggregator, Gotthiel said.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, ezra gotthiel, google, natural language, News, Search, technology business research, voice recognition, wavii /

Betaworks, Owner of Digg, Acquires Instapaper

April 25, 2013 / Cameron Scott / No comments

Betaworks, which made a splash with its purchase of Digg last July, has made another, smaller splash today with its acquisition of the reading app Instapaper.

Instapaper allows users to save Web content they want to read later. Launched in 2008, it was an early example of a clean, reliable app that solved problems unique to mobile computing.

Instapaper developer Marco Arment announced the deal on his blog.

“Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do,” Arment said.

Arment said he had contacted Betaworks, which defines itself as “a company that builds companies,” with the offer to sell.

“We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further,” Arment said.

 

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Category: acquisitions, Betaworks, Digg, Instapaper, Marco Arment, News /

LinkedIn Acquires Pulse News Reader and Publishing Platform for $90 Million

April 11, 2013 / Devon Glenn / No comments

In a move to make LinkedIn “the definitive professional publishing platform,” the company has acquired Pulse, the makers of a news reader and mobile content distribution platform.

The company sold for approximately $90 million, 90 percent of which will be stock; the remaining 10 percent will be cash, according to LinkedIn.

Owned by Alphonso Labs, Inc., Pulse reaches 30 million users in 190 countries with content from more than 750 publishers on iOS and Android devices.

Members from the Engineering, Product, Design and other teams at Pulse will move to LinkedIn’s company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters when the deal closes.

Pulse members will still be able to use the apps during the transition.

“We are thrilled to be able to add Pulse’s considerable talent, technology, and products to our growing ecosystem of content offerings, and we believe that they will help us accelerate our ability to deliver to our members the insights they need to be better at what they do, on any device,” said Deep Nishar, SVP of products and user experience, in a statement. “To continue to deliver that value to our members, our vision for content is that LinkedIn will be the definitive professional publishing platform, and Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision.”

LinkedIn recently enhanced its options for content marketing to advertisers with the addition of slide shows through SlideShare and videos from YouTube. The company will also allow Sponsored Posts within the professional network.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, Deals, linkedin, News, pulse /

TripAdvisor Acquires Luxury Travel Site Jetsetter

April 9, 2013 / Devon Glenn / No comments

Travel review community TripAdvisor has acquired Jetsetter, Gilt Groupe’s luxury private sale site where professional travel reviewers cherry-pick the best local hotspots.

TripAdvisor’s deal service, SniqueAway, similarly offers discounts on hotels that receive 4 out of 5 stars, but its reviews are based on the feedback of real travelers who are TripAdvisor members.

Despite its similarities to SniqueAway, TripAdvisor has no plans to shutter the newly acquired site. “The Jetsetter team has built a great site with a loyal following that we value and plan to continue to let it operate independently,” said TripAdvisor spokesperson Alison Croyle.

Based in New York, Jetsetter also offers a personal travel planning service as well as flash sales drawn from its database of hotels, resorts, and vacation homes around the world.

Gilt Groupe had put the site up for sale in October 2012, but was unable to find a buyer, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“In a short span of time, Jetsetter has emerged as a premier player in the travel space, and we are proud of what the team has accomplished,” said Gilt CEO Michelle Peluso in a statement. “There are strong synergies between Jetsetter and TripAdvisor and we are confident that having Jetsetter be part of the TripAdvisor group will further accelerate its growth.”

The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Image by ronstik. 

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: acquisitions, Deals, Jetsetter, News, sniqueaway, TripAdvisor /
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