Written on July 24, 2008 – 5:18 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook are not the only high-profile businesses losing key executives these days. Mike Baker, who became VP and head of Nokia Interactive Advertising after the acquisition of mobile advertising company Enpocket (where he was CEO), has decided to leave the Finnish mobile giant to get his kicks elsewhere.
August 8 will be his final day with the global handset manufacturer. Baker had been busy expanding Nokia Media Network’s reach from parts of Europe and Asia to a more global audience extending to the United States, South America, and more of Europe. The network brought in marquee publishers such as Hearst, Reuters, Discovery, and AccuWeather. Nokia has named a new head of its ad unit: longtime Nokia exec Tom Henricksson will most probably replace Baker.
Baker says he learned a lot during his year at Nokia, but that deep down he’s an entrepreneur who loves building companies from scratch.
“There’s so much going on in the digital advertising space, and it’s a great time to be doing that,” he said. “I’ve long been a personal investor in companies in the space. I’m going to do a little bit of consulting, and do some investing. That will keep me busy for a bit anyhow,” Baker told ClickZ.
On a sidenote: Venturebeat will be less thrilled with the news. The blog recently added Baker to its speaker list for its first MobileBeat conference, which is about to kick off as I’m writing this.
(Via mocoNews)
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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.
Written on April 8, 2008 – 5:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
In a discussion on TechCrunch about where Europe’s own Silicon Valley would emerge, some interesting suggestions were made (warning: many links to specific comments follow). From Moscow to Lisbon and from Estonia to London.
The latter was the most mentioned location, followed by Finland and Switzerland. Finland has an USP that is their biggest pro and con at the same time: Nokia. On the one hand, it’s THE European tech company, on the other: it sucks up all the talent.
Switzerland would be a fair option, since it’s an innovative country and home of some important venture capitalists like Index Ventures. Yet a new development makes the question even more complicated: Nokia has just announced that it would establish a research center in Lausanne. It will be a joint lab with two Swiss federal institutes of technology. It will open its doors in June.
According to All About Symbian, the research agenda will focus on persuasive communications:
- Exploring new interaction experiences and technologies utilizing all the human senses;
- Services and applications based on the user’s context, such as location, and personal preferences, e.g.,
information provided by sensors within a mobile device or in the surrounding world;
- Internet services and technologies - enriching the Internet experience on mobile devices.
Nokia’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Iannucci said to Reuters that Nokia ’sees the fusing of the digital and physical worlds as a key objective in mobility.’
So, will this cause some sort of local brain drain? Kai Lemmetty from Floobs told me during The Next Conference that this is the case in Finland. Nokia just picks out the talent and makes them an offer they can’t refuse. As you can imagine, this is deadly for local start-up action. And a good start-up atmosphere is one of the most important conditions for a Silicon Valley-like area. So all you European start-up experts, please lend me your thought on this matter.
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