According to VentureBeat, The Washington Post Company has acquired personalized news aggregator iCurrent. The purchase price was not disclosed, VentureBeat says it was likely north of $5 million.
Location: San Francisco, CA
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According to an announcement on the nextstop site, nextstop has been acquired by Facebook.
Nextstop was launched just over two years ago and enabled nextstop users to write short travel reviews and recomendations. nextstop was founded by Adrian Graham, Carl Sjogreen (both ex-Google) and Charles Lin. Termes of the deal were disclosed, but the announcement said nextstop.com will be shutting down on September 1, 2010. The liklihood is that Facebook are using the acquisition to acquire the people.
From the announcement, “What this means is that we’ll be joining Facebook and that Facebook has bought most of our assets. This creates a number of big changes for the nextstop product and our community, but we believe it’s an opportunity for some of the ideas behind nextstop to reach Facebook’s audience of more than 400 million users and have a much bigger impact on the world than we could on our own.”
Location: USA, Palo Alto, CA
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Related article – Facebook acquires ShareGrove Posted May 27, 2010
The9 Limited, an online game developer and operator in China, has made a strategic minority equity investment in Aurora Feint.
Based in Burlingame, California, Aurora Feint Inc. develops mobile games and operates OpenFeint, a leading mobile social platform and application for smartphones, OpenFeint includes a set of online game services such as leaderboards and achievements running in a cloud based web service operated by Aurora Feint Inc. OpenFeint’s developer SDK is a toolkit that can be integrated in any iPhone based game. Thousands of mobile game developers use OpenFeint and there are more than 28 million registered users and 2,200 games live in the Apple App Store. OpenFeint also announced OpenFeint X in 2010, which is a virtual goods management system that enables developers to build free-to-play social games for mobile phones.
Mr. Jun Zhu, The9’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We are confident of the prospect for this mobile platform and believe it will play an important role in the future development of global mobile internet. The investment in Aurora Feint is an important step of The9’s establishment of a mobile gaming platform and is also an integral part of our global strategy.”
Location: China, Shanghai & USA, Burlingame, CA
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Related article – The9 Limited acquires a majority interest in Red 5 Studios Posted on March 24, 2010
MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, has acquired Social Express, a social gaming development company, marking the company’s first entry into the social gaming space. MTV Networks will develop social games based on original IP, as well as shows and characters from MTV, Nickelodeon and its other brands, with the first game to be introduced in the third quarter of 2010. MTV Networks will also leverage Social Express’s expertise to launch a publishing platform for independent game developers. Based in San Francisco, Social Express’s veteran management team boasts former executives and developers from Apple, AOL, Yahoo! and Zynga.
“Social gaming is one of the biggest drivers of the explosive growth in social media – it’s fun, it’s engaging, and it’s shareable,” said Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks. “Social Express brings us strong experience and know-how in this burgeoning space, which we’ll supercharge with the IP and scale of Nickelodeon and other MTV Networks brands to create great new social gaming experiences for our fans and cool tools for independent developers as well.”
Social Express will be integrated into Nickelodeon Digital, with Social Express co-founder and CEO Tony Espinoza overseeing social gaming strategy and development as Vice President and General Manager of Social Gaming for MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon Kids & Family Group. Neil Souza, co-founder of Social Express and FoulPlay Media, will be Vice President of Technology, Social Games. Both will report to Dave Williams, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Games, Nickelodeon Kids & Family Group, who reports to Stephen Youngwood, Executive Vice President for Digital, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids & Family Group.
“The Social Express team is a great addition to our gaming unit, and they are set to be a key part of our growth strategy,” said Youngwood.
In May, MTV Networks game sites attracted more than 22 million unique visitors and ranked as the number one destination in the online gaming category (MTV Networks game sites are a custom entity in ComScore – MMx). MTV Networks game sites include AddictingGames.com, Shockwave.com, Nick.com Games, Nick.com Arcade, Neopets, GameTrailers, and Xfire. The acquisition of Social Express is the latest gaming initiative for the Nickelodeon Kids & Family Group, which has also launched AddictingGames on the iPhone with the AG iNetwork and introduced a virtual goods platform to the site in the past year.
Location: USA, New York, NY & San Francisco, CA
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Social gaming company Playdom has acquired Metaplace, a privately held social gaming technology and game design company based in San Diego, California. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Raph Koster and John Donham founded their virtual world game engine development studio after leaving Sony Online Entertainment in 2006, following their groundbreaking work on such games as Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest II. For the last three years Metaplace has focused on building state-of-the-art virtual world and social gaming technology leading to the launch of the company’s first social games “Island Life” and “My Vineyard” in early 2010.
“Playdom is very excited to add the Metaplace game design group to its growing family of game studios,” said John Pleasants, Playdom CEO.
“We expect that the Metaplace social game engine will form a key part of our unified back-end technology platform for Playdom’s games going forward,” added David Sobeski, Playdom CTO. “We think the Metaplace engine is a competitive advantage in that it will take other companies years to duplicate its capabilities which will streamline and quicken our game development cycles.”
“We are thrilled to be joining the Playdom family and contributing to their stellar roster of social games with both new titles and technology,” said John Donham, CEO of Metaplace. “I look forward to running the Playdom-San Diego office while Raph continues his creative design work with Dan Yue, Playdom Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, and Jason Hable, Metaplace’s VP of Business Operations, moves to Mountain View to oversee Playdom’s company-wide Monetization efforts,” Donham concluded.
Metaplace is the latest in a long line of acquisitions for Playdom. Metaplace was funded by Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Crescendo Ventures and Charles River Ventures.
Location: USA, San Diego, CA
Ref: F231109-485
Related articles
The Walt Disney Company has acquired Palo Alto-based Tapulous, a developer of music games for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Through a merger agreement, Tapulous is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company reporting into Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG).
As a part of DIMG’s mobile games group, Tapulous strengthens the company’s portfolio of games and entertainment offerings in the fast-growing mobile arena. Through this deal, Tapulous founders, Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy, as well as their development team in Palo Alto, CA will be joining DIMG’s mobile content group. Decrem and Lacy, previously CEO and COO of Tapulous, will now take on the leadership roles for the DIMG mobile group with Decrem reporting to DIMG President Steve Wadsworth.
“Mobile gaming is seeing unprecedented growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our position in the mobile business,” said Wadsworth. “In a short time, Bart and Andrew have built Tapulous into a successful and accomplished mobile games developer that’s emerged as one of the most successful companies in the industry. We welcome the Tapulous team to the Disney family and look forward to integrating their popular games into Disney’s offerings.”
“Tapulous has been on the leading-edge of mobile gaming. By joining Disney, we will be able to continue to excel in this evolving industry and more quickly realize our vision to lead the mobile, social entertainment revolution,” said Decrem. “With Disney’s powerful breadth of content and heritage in technological innovation, they are the perfect partner for Tapulous. It is a true honor to join the Disney team.”
Location: USA, Burbank, CA
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ITA Software, a flight information software company, and Google have signed a definitive agreement for Google to acquire ITA for $700 million in cash, subject to adjustments.
“ITA’s very talented team has created an impressive product to organize flight information,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google. “Their technology opens exciting possibilities for us to create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online, and we’re looking forward to welcoming them to Google.”
“It is a privilege to work with a most skilled and dedicated team to build innovative technologies that people use every day,” said Jeremy Wertheimer, CEO & President, ITA Software, Inc. “We are all looking forward to continuing and expanding our efforts as part of Google.”
Founded in 1996 by a team of MIT computer scientists, ITA’s technically advanced solutions for organizing flight information were hailed as a catalyst for change in the online travel industry. Its innovative algorithms and deep airline industry expertise create a customizable flight data organization tool used by both airlines and online travel agencies.
The deal will allow Google to pursue the creation of new flight search tools that will enable users to find better flight information more easily on the Internet. Google is excited about ITA’s QPX business and the opportunity to work closely with current and future customers. Google will honor all existing agreements and looks forward to adding new partners.
Location: USA, Cambridge, CA & USA, Mountain View, CA
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Other recent Google acquisitions
kgb has acquired 100 percent of the outstanding shares of Centroid Media, the specialist Internet business best known for the people search engine and online reputation sites, Wieowie in the Netherlands, and Whoozy across other territories. Their Network also includes www.kamer.nl, www.huizenvinder.nl , www.kamerplanet.nl, www.huizenmailer.nl, www.hotelvinder.nl, www.autorunner.nl, www.cuisinio.nl.
Centroid’s real-time data analysis, spidering and data extraction technology is a strong strategic and capability fit within the growing portfolio of online information and transactional services provided by kgb and its subsidiaries.
“We are delighted to be bringing the Centroid Media team within the kgb family of businesses,” said Trevor Saadi, kgb’s Head of Online Business. “This isn’t about acquisition, but the merging of talent in the exciting frontier territory of value living enabled by advanced Internet optimization. Centroid Media is a strong strategic fit and will accelerate our commercial roll-out plans, both in terms of capabilities and territories.”
Bart Kappenburg, Founder and Chief Executive of Centroid Media, added: “I’m very pleased with this great opportunity for our technology to be rolled out internationally. This opens up the scope of delivery for our talented team in a very exciting area of innovation where things are moving quickly. Centroid has already made strong progress to advance search capability in niche-markets, like people, cars and houses. Now, with kgb, everything will expand rapidly.”
Location: USA, New York, NY & Netherlands, Groningen
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CatholicMatch.com has acquired TraditionalSingleCatholics.com. the terms of the deal were not dixclosed.
TraditionalSingleCatholics.com was launched four and a half years ago to serve single Catholics with specific needs and preferences. It elicited a flood of grateful emails: “Thank goodness you’re there. It’s so nice to go to a place where you don’t have to explain yourself and everybody’s on the same page.” Others wrote: “Sometimes you feel like you’re out there all alone, and this site provided a much-needed source of support.”
The staff of TraditionalSingleCatholics.com has told its members that they’ll be in good hands at CatholicMatch. “They’ll have access to so many more services than we could ever provide: 38 forums, three live chats, a sophisticated in-line instant message system, a temperament test and the largest community of Catholic singles online.”
CatholicMatch.com acquired CatholicDaters.com in 2007 and SingleCatholics.com in 2008.
Location: USA, Pittsburgh, PA
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Local.com Corporation, a local search site and network, has acquired the assets of OCTANE360, a technology startup providing domain-based local advertising solutions to small businesses, domain portfolio owners, agencies and channel partners.
Under the terms of the agreement, Local.com acquired the assets of OCTANE360 for $5 million in cash and stock with an earnout of up to $5.9 million if certain performance criteria are met in the two-year period following the closing. Founded in 2008 and based in Los Angeles, California, OCTANE360 will become a wholly-owned division of Local.com.
“This transaction represents a significant expansion of Local.com’s product suite and technology platform, allowing us to manage the scaled acquisition, creation and deployment of geo-category targeted small business domains,” said Heath Clarke, Local.com chairman and CEO. “Furthermore, Octane Experts’ content marketplace allows for the scaled procurement of proprietary, curated content, thereby enhancing the SEO value of local domains under our management.”
Local.com anticipates that the deployment of content across proprietary geo-category local domains will result in an increase in organic O&O traffic, a strategic objective of the company. The company also expects that the OCTANE360 product suite will open the domain portfolio industry as a potentially valuable new market for the Local.com network. OCTANE360 currently generates revenues from various ad formats including subscription advertising, performance and display ad units.
“We are excited to join forces with Local.com,” said Rioux. “We feel that our combined assets of platform, products, services, reach and relationships create a compelling offering to serve the growing local search market. We look forward to becoming part of the Local.com team while quickly ramping our business.”
CREDIT FACILITY
The company has also opened a $30 million revolving credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank. The facility, which is secured by all of the company’s assets, is expected to be used primarily for general working capital and to fund strategic growth initiatives.
Location: USA, Irvine, CA
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Fusion Corporate Partners 
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