Written on June 23, 2008 – 4:02 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
TechCrunch broke the news today: Nokia has acquired Berlin-based Plazes for an undisclosed amount. The service - founded by Felix Petersen - allows its users to track the places, activities and people in their lives. Sounds like Twitter and Jaiku right? But it isn’t completely the same, as the location is Plazes core feature. You don’t have to mention you’re in Berlin, it shows up in a Google map. Updates can be send by SMS or a mobile app (soon also on the iPhone).
Felix Petersen
There’s one other important difference though, while Twitter is U.S.-based and Finnish Jaiku was sucked up by Google, Plazes however, will remain European. Their first financial backing came from European private equity firm Doughty Hanson, which invested €2.7 million. The second round of funding DOES have an American touch to it, as Plazes received €1 million in total from Marc Andreessen (US), Esther Dyson (US), and Martin Varsavsky (Argentina). But that’s all there is. Plazes will stay in Berlin and remain member of the European tech family. And that is good for Europe. Just so you know, Loic Le Meur feels the same about it.
So what will happen next? Most likely, Plazes will become a standard Nokia app - installed on all its phones. Here’s what Felix himself (or his ghost blogger) writes:
The team is very excited to be able to further develop the Plazes service that is online today together with Nokia. If all goes well, in the near future plazes will be made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices.
I hope geo localization is ready for its big break-through.
Wanna know how the Plazes office and Felix’ home looks like? Check the MTV Cribs-like video we shot in January.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on June 23, 2008 – 3:14 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
eBay has acquired Vuvox, a visual media company that lets you create and blend your personal media – video, photos and music into rich personal expressions, for an undisclosed amount of money. What struck me as odd is that eBay hasn’t announced the acquisition at all.
Our source at eBay confirms the acquisition, but apart from the size of the deal (”a small acquisition”), our source cannot give us any more insight. It seems to me that eBay is interested in the technology and maybe the team of Vuvox, but it is hard to guess its purpose within eBay.
On their about the team page, they’re pretty vague about who they are and use nicknames like ‘Da Man’, ‘Fast Talking Business Guy’ and ‘Man of Steel’ but after some googling you’ll find that William Woodward (co-founder of Macromedia, early investor and board member of Myspace) and Dane Howard (author of Future of Memories and designer) are part of the team.
Behind the click is an example of content build with Vuvox technology. (more…)
Written on June 11, 2008 – 3:25 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although the Germans have a patent on the copy-cat approach - Freundefeed, anyone? -, Spanish entrepreneurs recently proved to master this unique skill as well. And now there’s 24-year-old computing student Maciej Popowicz from Poland who also seems to get that the best business plan is to import a brilliant idea from abroad. He built Nasza-klasa, a Polish version of Britain’s Friends Reunited, France’s Copains d’avant, and Holland’s Schoolbank eighteen months ago. What came next, is well described by IOL Technology:
It has taken Poland’s Internet world by storm, and claims 11 million users, giving it widest coverage and penetration in this country of 38 million people, well ahead of YouTube’s 6,4 million Polish-based users.
To complete this entrepreneurial fairy-tale, TechCrunch reported earlier today that Estonia’s Forticom has acquired a majority stake in nasza-klasa for 200 million PLN, or 60 million Euros. From now on, Forticom will reach 7.5 million monthly users.
Although it isn’t the classiest way of making money, copying a successful service from abroad does make sense. People generally have the same needs - in this case: connecting with old classmates -, so why not offering them a localized version?
Written on June 7, 2008 – 2:48 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
AOL used to be world’s largest walled garden. Yet shortly after they were incorporated by Times Warner, the walls collapsed and the majority of garden visitors left. But during the past few years, the gardener has acquired quite a number of companies - like Bebo, Buy.at and Goowy media. All these web services have thing in common: they’re focused on advertising. Within a very short while, AOL has become an important advertising company. Now it’s time for the former Internet giant to bring structure into the company.
AOL Mountain View Office
The AOL executives started Platform-A for that task last September. This division houses ad sales for all its sites, ad network properties and supporting technologies. Platform-A has integrated sales for Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media and AdTech. After cleaning up the house in the U.S., Platform-A now continues in Europe.
AOL will merge its existing European advertising subsidies - Advertising.com, Adtech, and buy.at - into Platform-A’s international operations. The European HQ is based in London and former Advertising.com international head Brendan Condon will be in charge. He can offer its American customers a more global appeal by placing their ads on European websites. With more social networks becoming global entities, advertisers will surely welcome this move by AOL.
Written on March 13, 2008 – 1:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
AOL is continuing its buying spree by acquiring Bebo. Reuters reports that Time Warner’s Internet division bought the social network for 850 million US dollars, in cash.
Bebo has 40 million users and may call itself no.1 in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. In the US is has a respectable third place behind MySpace and Facebook.
“Bebo’s dynamic management team recognizes that the Internet is less about destination and more about connecting people, culture and lifestyles,” AOL President Ron Grant said in a statement. I’ll translate it for you: Now we can target the adds of recently bought online affiliate marketing network Buy.at and the widgets of Goowy Media even better! Moreover, we’re catching up with Microsoft again!
One thing is for sure though, thanks to mother company Time Warner, AOL is making a remarkable comeback as an Internet giant.
[WebTipr: David Petherick, United Kingdom]
Written on March 7, 2008 – 10:48 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When Google acquired YouTube in 2006, some guys in the Russian city of Oriol were pretty excited about that. I know I was as well, especially when I saw the video shot by the happy founders Chad and Steve. That’s just a web-savvy’s dream. The guys from Oriol - Oleg Volobuyev, Mikhail Paulkin, Askar Tuganbayev - agreed with me and created their own YouTube: Rutube. So instead of bluntly calling Rutube a rip-off, I’m going to express my admiration for the guts of its founders to just start working on making that dream reality.
They bootstrapped the online video community for two years and turned it into to largest independent video site of Russia. According to the Quintura blog, RuTube has 400 thousand daily users and more than 40 million video views per month. That didn’t go unnoticed by the leading Russian media holding Gazprom-Media. Yesterday business daily Kommersand reported that the media giant acquired a majority stake in RuTube, valuing the business at 15 million dollars. Moreover, they will pump millions into RuTube. Quintura reports that Gazprom-Media has already started broadcasting video shows on RuTube.
Gazprom-Media was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of the world’s largest natural gas company and is famous for acquiring independent media outlets such as Vladimir Gusinsky’s Media Most holding. Apparently they’ve decided to shift their focus to online media. Considering Gazprom-Media is not afraid of changing editorial policies to their needs, I don’t think this recent acquisition will be beneficiary for the freedom of speech in Russia.
Written on February 11, 2008 – 6:08 pm
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
This is guest post by Reinout H.M. te Brake, Group Strategist for the Spill Group Holding
Google has acquired online address book, Plaxo in a “sub-$200m offer”, according to a blog on tech news site Wired. The site claims that Plaxo has accepted an offer and that the “purchasing company is most likely search engine Google.” The report has sparked various other online rumors, and follows a month of speculation about a major takeover bid. This followed a New York Times report at the beginning of January, which said Plaxo had hired investment bank, Revolution Partners, to handle a forthcoming deal.
Plaxo’s Chief Platform Architect Joseph Smarr
Silicon Valley gossip site, Valleywag, posted a report responding to the Google acquisition rumors claiming that the deal was completed due to good relations between Google’s social-network strategist Brad Fitzpatrick and Plaxo’s Chief Platform Architect Joseph Smarr. However a separate Valleywag report claims that cable operator, Comcast, may be bidding for Plaxo. Meanwhile CNet dismisses the Google rumor as “unlikely.”
In January it was strongly rumored that Facebook were seeking to buy Plaxo, also for $200m, yet this never materialized. A week earlier, the New York Times claimed Plaxo was due to auction itself for some $100m, with investment bankers recruited to handle the deal. Meanwhile, tech site, Techcrunch, this week cited a Silicon Valley insider as saying “Plaxo has been desperately, desperately, desperately trying to sell.”
Mountain View-based Plaxo started in 2002 as an online address book service, but recently shifted its focus to social networking with the launch of Plaxo Pulse. This tool acts as a social network aggregator, providing Facebook-style news feeds when users’ friends update their profiles on sites such as Twitter, Digg, and MySpace. In January Plaxo joined Facebook and Google as part of the Dataportability Group, a body which is working on projects designed to let users of social networks to transfer data from one network to another.
So, who is up to speed here and can give me details!?
Written on February 6, 2008 – 2:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Looks like Microsoft woke up AOL with their bid on Yahoo. The smaller rival has acquired two companies in two days. On February 4th they turned a long partnership with widget company Goowy Media into an acquisition and yesterday they bought online affiliate marketing network Buy.at. Both acquired companies are Ads-related, so I think we can say AOL is looking for ways to monetize their free services.
Goowy makes it possible for users to create widgets and monitor them. They also have a gallery of widgets for consumers, who can place them on blogs, social network profiles, desktops and personalized start pages. With the acquisition, AOL secures itself of a division that is a strong force in the widget market.
Buy.at is a network in which advertisers pay its web publishing members only when a click on an ad leads to an action, such as buying a product. It used to be domain redirect service that owned domains like stay.at, download.at, play.at and, officiously, buy.at.
Companies like AOL, such as Altavista, fascinate me. They used to be Internet giants who founded services that learned us to use the Internet. Almost everybody started their Internet adventures at one of these two companies. But now, Altavista seems to have vanished in the search marketing division of Yahoo, yet AOL is still alive and kicking with five acquisitions in 12 months. Probably because their mother company Time Warner sees it like an advertise spin-off of their cable company. Yahoo apparently uses Altavista’s knowledge, but isn’t promoting the brand. The last press info was released five years ago.
One of the few survivors, Yahoo, is now likely to be acquired as well. Strange, for such a young medium, Internet arouses a helluva lot nostalgic feelings.
acquire, acquisition, berlin, Felix Petersen, germany, iphone, Loic Le Meur, Marc Andreessen, Martin Varsavsky, Nokia, twitter
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