Archive for: acquisition
LiveWire Mobile has acquire another mobile music service provider Groove Mobile for $14.5 million.
Groove Mobile powers the mobile music stores of such wireless operators as Sprint in the U.S., as well as Bell Mobility in Canada and 3 UK. LiveWire Mobile is a division of NMS Communications, which provides mobile personalization and content services to various carrier partners. According to the press release announcing the acquisition, Groove Mobile made $7.4 million in revenue last year operating the mobile music services for 12 wireless operators. That is not many download sales at all!
The acquisition allows LiveWire mobile to offer full song downloads along with ringtones and videos. However it also provides some insight into the state of the mobile music industry, still and industry that is currently underutilised and not on the rise.
AOL has announced this morning that they have acquired social networking service Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo is the third-largest social networking service in the U.S. behind MySpace and Facebook. Why has AOL done this? One reason is that the soon to be Platform-A will have a huge amount of inventory to sell. AOL has made a big step forward in targeting the youth demographic that use Bebo.Â
Bebo claims over 40 million members and is one of the leading social networks in the UK, and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand, and number three in the U.S. Its users are heavily engaged and view an average of 78 pages per usage day. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users.
A couple of weeks ago we reported that Faces.com (Australian based social network) headed to the dead pool. Today, we’ve learned that the assets of the company have been acquired by 3BILL, the UK-based mobile content company that now appears to be moving into the social realm. According to 3BILL, the plan is to integrate these recent acquisitions into one community and re-launch later this year, presumably under the premium Faces.com name.
This has to be the biggest news since the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. Digg is still up for sale and Techcrunch reports that they are close to finding a buyer. If you dont already know, investment bank Allen & Co have been shopping around on Digg’s behalf to find a potential buyer. A source very close to the deal mentions that four companies are in heavy due diligence with Digg – two media/news companies, and two big Internet companies – Google and Microsoft. And Google and Microsoft are on the verge of making their bids.
Originally, Digg was looking for a price tag of around $300 million, but it is reported that Google are likely to bid approximately $200 million for Digg. Microsoft however will be offering a figure lower that the $200 million, solely because they already have a three year advertising deal with Digg.
Even at $200 million is Digg overpriced? I think it is. Digg has received a lot of rewards for their technology and product, but the community is the key. If Digg is bought by Microsoft will the community continue to use the product with the same intensity as they current do? I think not.
So far Digg has only raised $11.3 million in funding, so this will be a great out for Kevin Rose and friends.
It has been reported by Mashable, Techcrunch and CenterNetwork that Demand Media has acquired Pluck. The story was broken by Mashable editor Adam Ostrow, and it has now been confirmed via an inside source that the acquisition price was $75 million, all in cash.
Pluck raised $17 million in three rounds of funding and their revenues are around $10 million per year. The deal marks a major new initiative for Demand Media, who has used more than $350 million in funding to build a network that reaches more than 64 million unique users per month and includes sites such as eHow, Cracked.com, and Answerbag.
Pluck itself has never really done too much, but currently has a strong product in BlogBurst which allows bloggers to syndicate their articles to major newspapers and news distribution outlets. Crenk is a member of BlogBurst.
Compete, the web analytics and online market research startup which is based in Boston has been acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), for $75 million. TNS which is based in London is a leading market information and insight company.
Additionally, it has been reported by Techcrunch that another $75 million is possible in earn-outs through 2010, which there for could potentially bring the acquisition to $150 million. This seems to be quite a good price for Compete, considering their main competitor comScorehas a market cap of $570 million.
Compete’s revenues in 2007 rose 50 percent to $15 million, but it lost $4.5 million. Now in 2008 with an acquisition of the company, will Compete move into a more corporate business model and start to charge for ranking information?
According to Somewhat Frank, here is what we can expect to see from Compete now that they are acquired:
1. New products. Compete will continue to operate as a stand-alone company, but we have already identified stellar new product opportunities to develop with the TNS media intelligence and custom research teams;
2. Biggest data. We already had the most clickstream data in the industry pre-merger, and now the TNS consumer panels extend our advantage over the other digital research companies;
3. Rapid growth. From the start, the Compete vision has always been to become the number one digital intelligence company in the world. TNS has tens of thousands of clients across 80 countries. That’s a nice global platform to be a part of.
Getty Images the photo stock giant have actually found a company to purchase them at a premium price. It is being reported that Getty Images has been purchased for $2.4 billion to private equity firm Hellman and Friedman. The $34/share price is a 39% premium over Friday’s close, and more than 50% higher than GYI’s price in mid-January, when the sale started.
Insound.com has been acquired by Warner Music Group. Well the site was actually acquired by The Alternative Distribution Alliance, which is an independent distributor owned by Warner. This is quite a good acquisition for the ADA because Insound has a very good back end infrastructure that can be exploited by ADA to provide their own digital store. The site itself will continue to be operated by co-founder Matt Wishnow, hence a good deal for both parties involved.
Napster in a very interesting move has raised their monthly subscription fees. In true Napster style this was done in an email sent to subcriber, which stated the non-portable subscription rate will increase from $10 per month to $13. A 30% increase! Although this price change is Napsters first in four years, I really cant see this doing them any favours in the market that they are drastically behind in at the moment. These prices changes will take affect on January 30. I made a very bold prediction and said that they will be heading towards the dead pool by the end of 2008, so im very keen to see how much of an affect this price increase will have on the company.
The news of the day must be that Google has acquired Jaiku. Jaiku is a microblogging site similar to Pownce and Twitter. It is a bit of a surprise that Google has opted to purchase Jaiku (which hails from Finland) instead of Twitter (the market leader) or Pownce (the new kid on the block with the best user interface).
Have a look at what everyone else has been saying about the deal:
Twitter has not long got Series A Funding, so it would have been rare for them to be purchased. Pownce on the other hand seems to be on the downhill slide. Since their highly publicised launch Pownce has never lived up to expectations and with the recent news about Kevin Rose potentially moving Pownce features over to Digg, it has just never recovered. If you look at Alexa data on Pownce you will notice it wont be too long until it dies a death, on the quick slide down. Its seems that Jaiku was an important match with Google because it has more of a presence in activity streams and mobile presence and those are the markets Google is trying to gain more market share. It that last week Google also launched Adsense for mobile, so this will be a nice addition to boost the start of that new service.
It has been reported by Techcrunch that Newsvine has been acquired by MSNBC.com. It is reported that the deal was closed on October the 5th and all in cash. This is MSNBC’s for acquisition in its 11 year history. Look out for the site to become a citizens journal with social media thrown in.
I have always thought that MSNBC was just a copy of news stories from other Microsoft or NBC sites and not a stand alone news site and entity.
The latest news is the Google has agreed to acquire mobile startup Zingku. There is very little know about the company, but according to Zingku themselves this is what they do:
“Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers†with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging and picture messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.â€
This is a bit of a strange one, Techcrunch cant even find out much about the company. Come on Arrington im sure you must have some contacts somewhere that can get you some inside information!
