Research In Motion, acquires social mobile gaming business Scoreloop

June 9, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has acquired social mobile gaming business Scoreloop.

Scoreloop was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Munich, Germany with offices in the US and Asia. The company was funded by European VCs Target Partners and Earlybird.

Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations at RIM, said on the Blackberry blog, “We’re excited that the Scoreloop team is joining the BlackBerry® Developer team and bringing their expertise in creating social and collaborative gaming toolkits for mobile developers to the BlackBerry platform. We have recently enabled our developers to create social app experiences through our BBM™ Social Platform and have seen some very innovative applications result from that. We look forward to working with the team at Scoreloop to provide tools that will further enable our developer community to take gaming to a new level of social integration on the BlackBerry platform.”

Canada, Ontario & Germany Munich

 

 

 

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Geneology website MyHeritage.com has acquired Bliscy.pl from Wirtualna Polska S.A.

June 9, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Geneology website MyHeritage.com has acquired Bliscy.pl from Wirtualna Polska S.A.

The move follows the company’s acquisition of several other leading family networks in 2010, including Polish site MoiKrewni.pl and its parent network OSN GmbH. Merging Bliscy.pl with MyHeritage.pl, the Polish website of MyHeritage.com, unites Poland’s competing family history sites.

The merger adds more than half a million Bliscy.pl users to the global MyHeritage.com network, resulting in a user base of more than 2.6 million Polish users.

“Having established ourselves as the leading international destination for families to connect to their past and to one another – acquiring Bliscy.pl is a natural step that enriches our global family network” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage.com. “Our service and flagship Smart Matching™ technology enjoy a network effect, providing more value as more people use them. For this reason, this acquisition delivers great value both to the Bliscy.pl users and to the users of MyHeritage.com. Our international network of users consists of millions of families with roots in Poland, who will now find it even easier to connect to long-lost relatives and discover more about their unique family histories”.

The acquisition of Bliscy.pl marks the third major acquisition by MyHeritage.com within the last 18 months, following the acquisition of European family network OSN GmbH and its network of 10 family sites including verwandt.de, moikrewni.pl and verwant.nl, and Dutch Family Network ZOOOF. By merging the family networks into one international platform, MyHeritage.com is building a worldwide Family Graph that has grown to more than 18 million family trees and 760 million profiles.

Poland, Warsaw & UK, London & Israel, Tel Aviv

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Batanga is acquiring two Latin American online media companies, Adfunky and I-Network

June 8, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Batanga is acquiring two Latin American online media companies, Adfunky and I-Network. The new acquisitions will exponentially increase the company’s audience and publishing partners in the US, Mexico and Latin America as well as provide its existing sales organization with value-added product offerings for marketers looking to reach Hispanic consumers online. Headquartered in Miami, regional offices are located in Mexico City, Bogota and Buenos Aires as well as sales offices in nineteen cities throughout the globe. GroupArgent represented Adfunky and I-Network in the transaction and acted as their exclusive financial advisors.

Batanga, Inc. is now the largest independent digital media company serving U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets. By leveraging investments in technology, product and content, Batanga, Inc. creates significant value for its advertisers and publishers in both markets. These acquisitions represent a major commitment by Batanga, Inc. to the Hispanic online market.

“For almost twelve years, Batanga has consistently delivered the U.S. Hispanic online audience to hundreds of advertisers. These acquisitions will allow us to grow our U.S. Hispanic business as well as deliver audiences in some of the fastest growing emerging online markets in the world,” said Rafael Urbina, Chairman and CEO, Batanga, Inc. “Our commitment to the U.S. Hispanic online market has never been stronger and we are now poised to offer the same quality products throughout Mexicoand Latin America.”

Based in Argentina, Adfunky is a fast growing ad network and digital media company founded by Internet veterans to boost the results of advertisers, agencies and publishers. “Uniting Adfunky’s audience and expertise, both in the U.S. and abroad, with Batanga’s sophisticated products will create impactful opportunities for advertisers,” said Mariano Burstein, Co-Founder, Adfunky. “We are thrilled to be part of such an innovative team,” echoed Matias Charas, Co-Founder, Adfunky. “Collectively, we have much more insight and understand Hispanics online better than anyone else.”

I-Network, a Bogota-based online marketing company, is a clear leader in the markets it operates in. “We are eager to join forces with Batanga and work alongside U.S. marketers looking to reach a Latin American audience,” said Juan Carlos Samper, CEO, I-Network. “As the marketplace continues to evolve, Batanga is ready to deliver the Latin consumer in the U.S. and abroad.”

USA, Miami, FL & Colombia, Bogata & Argentina

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eBay is to acquire Magento

June 8, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

eBay is to acquire Magento Inc., the creator of Magento, a leading open source ecommerce platform. The deal follows eBay’s acquisition of a minority stake in the company in 2010. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011.

The Magento platform serves tens of thousands of merchants worldwide and is supported by a global community of solution partners and third-party developers. Magento is a feature-rich, open-source, enterprise-class commerce solution that offers merchants a high degree of flexibility and control over the user experience, catalog, content and functionality of their online store. Magento Go, the company’s hosted software-as-a-service solution, provides small and growing merchants with the tools to help them succeed online – from payments to inventory management. Magento is a Los Angeles-based company with more than 290 employees.

“Technology-driven innovation is blurring the lines between online and offline commerce, changing the way consumers shop, and enabling retailers of all sizes to benefit from the latest innovations from the developer community,” said John Donahoe, President and Chief Executive Officer, eBay Inc. “The feedback we’ve heard from external developers has been clear — they don’t just want payments or an ecommerce site; they want access to a full set of commerce capabilities to build complete shopping experiences for merchants. We believe the acquisition of Magento and creation of our X.Commerce group will enable us to meet developers’ needs and drive global commerce innovation for retailers and consumers.

USA, San Jose, CA & Culver City, CA

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Intertainment Media to acquire Groupon like DealFrenzy.com

June 6, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Intertainment Media Inc. is acquiring DealFrenzy.com, a Groupon-like business. Intertainment will acquire all the turn-key assets of DealFrenzy.com including the backbone technology, deal pipeline, including preferred deals with major brands and an experienced sales and support team. The acquisition combines $500,000 in cash and $200,000 in Intertainment stock. The acquisition is expected to close by late June 2011.

DealFrenzy.com is scheduled to go live in early July 2011 and will launch in select US cities in 2011 and plans international, multi-language expansion.  In addition to consumer deals, DealFrenzy will be offering small and medium sized businesses access to commercial products and services further defining the group buying market.

“The acquisition of DealFrenzy is part of Intertainment’s merger and acquisition strategy for strategic investment and acquisition of immediate and near-term revenue programs that fit into Intertainment’s existing suite of services and technology,” said David Lucatch, CEO Intertainment Media “With the integration of Intertainment’s programs into DealFrenzy, we have effectively taken the group-buying, revenue rich platform, and enhanced it to make it not just socially engaging, but also to make it available to all cultural markets with no impediment of language communications.”

Canada, Ontario

 

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Max Media Group closes the acquisition of the assets of www.BB2Live.com

June 6, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet
Max Media Group has closed the acquisition of the assets of www.BB2Live.com and the company’s technology applications including Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Internet Radio, VOIP, and SMS text messaging.

The closing also includes the acquisition of BB2’s film and music library, BB2’s approximate 15 million subscribers and BlackBook2.com (includes a complete social networking site as well as numerous unique URLs for future development).

Max Media will immediately begin evolving the social networking site into a community driven social network. The social network will offer affinity driven and user demanded services including email, live internet video exchange, video web chat, music streaming, movie streaming, video online telephony, conference calling, SMS texting and coupon cell phone delivery. Additionally, the Company will deploy a multitude of platforms which can be customised for any company, advertiser or end user. These technologies will allow Max Media to have a presence in every industry.

James Grady President & CEO of Max Media Group, Inc. stated, “This acquisition uniquely positions us to capitalize on the growing trend towards social networking and social marketing. As the world searches for new ways to socialize and communicate globally with like minded individuals, marketers are scrambling to capitalize on their every like, desire or need with products, services or information. We have the services, products, resources and tools to be growing squarely in the middle of this expanding market.”

Grady continued, “Our film and music library will become an immediate opportunity for increased revenues. Driving traffic and usage to the libraries from both the subscriber base and new users will be an initial focus. Additionally, we plan to initiate the coupon cell phone delivery technology to capitalize on the current demand in the marketplace for the Groupon and Deal of the Day coupon models.”

“We are extremely excited to bring our technologies and innovations to Max Media.  Our vast resources coupled with their vision and mission sets Max Media up to be a leader in the internet marketing and content delivery space,” stated Amy Nalewaik Co-Founder of BB2Live.

USA, Palm Harbor, FL & Tarpon Springs, FL

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Getty Images has completed the acquisition of Photolibrary

June 6, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Getty Images, a leading creator and distributor of visual content and other media, has successfully completed the acquisition of Photolibrary, a leading provider of creative stills imagery. The acquisition was first announced on April 27 2011 and will bring Photolibrary’s renowned collections, including Peter Arnold and Oxford Scientific, to even more customers around the world.

“The demand for compelling creative content continues to increase around the world and it represents a vital part of the imagery industry. This acquisition positions us to meet and exceed our customers’ demand for this unique content, across both the Asia Pacific region and globally” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images.

With the combined resources of Getty Images and Photolibrary, Getty Images will build upon their complementary geographic presence whilst making Photolibrary’s content more widely available for global online distribution.

In May this year, Getty Images acquired PicScout, a leader in identifying image use, metadata and licensing information on the web.

USA, New York, NY

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Google acquires PostRank

June 6, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Google has acquired PostRank. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

PostRank was founded in 2007 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, PostRank (originally AideRSS, Inc.) monitors and collects social engagement events correlated with online content in real-time across the web. PostRank gathers where and when stories generate comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other forms of interaction from a host of social hubs. Publishers and people interested in their content use PostRank Data Services and Analytics to gauge influence and reach with audiences.

Ilya Grigorik commented on the PostRank blog, “We are extremely excited to join Google. We believe there is simply no better company on the web today that both understands the value of the engagement data we have been focusing on, and has the platform and reach to bring its benefits to the untold millions of daily, active Internet users.”

The PostRank team will be moving to Google’s Mountain View offices in California.

USA, Mountain View, CA & Canada, Ontario

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Groupon files for a $750 million IPO

June 3, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

There have been numerous reports (including on Fusion DigiNet) over the past few months forecasting it, so it was no surprise to read Groupon’s SEC filing announcing their $750 million initial public offering. It was also only in January this year that Groupon completed a huge $950 million round of financing valuing the company at $4.75 billion.

Groupon grew out of a website called The Point, a website launched in November 2007 . The business has grown rapidly; revenue has risen from $3.3 million in the second quarter of 2009 to $644.7 million in the first quarter of 2011.  However, it is still running at a loss. In the first three months of the year Groupon generated revenues of $644.7 million, made a net loss in the period of $146.48. The reason, the company is spending fast to expand fast. In the period from the second quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2011 Groupon’s subscriber base rose from 152,203 to 83.1 million and they are now active in 43 countries.

Groupon’s investors include Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Mail.ru Group (formerly Digital Sky Technologies), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover.

Read the SEC filing here.

USA, Chicago, IL

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Thomson Reuters is to acquire Manatron, a property tax automation and land registry software business

June 3, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Thomson Reuters is to acquire Manatron, a provider of property tax automation and land registry software for governments and municipalities around the world, from Thoma Bravo LLC, a private equity firm. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Manatron will strengthen the expanding Tax & Accounting business with an additional 1,400 clients in over 20 countries and more than 40 U.S. states. Manatron’s flagship solution, Government Revenue Management (GRM), is an integrated suite of web-based property recording, assessment and tax software that automates the operational, informational, and planning needs for assessors, auditors, treasurers, tax collectors and other government officials. Manatron’s software solutions are being used by governments to replace antiquated systems to help improve customer service, streamline processes and manage the growing velocity of legislative changes.

“The government tax automation space is a growing segment and a natural fit with our strategy to improve workflow efficiency for our clients through innovative technology,” said Brian Peccarelli, president of the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters. “Manatron has a great track record helping governments improve their collection and compliance processes, which improves accuracy, customer service and reduces costs associated with the collection process for all involved.”

In addition to its market-leading property tax offerings, Manatron is also considered a leader in the provision of land administration systems — helping governments and the private sector map, audit, register and publicize the value of assets and land. As one of the only providers of end-to-end government property tax management and land administration systems, Manatron processes more than $100 billion in annual tax revenue.

“Becoming part of Thomson Reuters extends Manatron’s global reach, but our mission remains the same — to deliver a solution that allows our clients to efficiently process and manage their land, property tax and assessment information,” said Bill McKinzie, president and chief executive officer at Manatron.

USA, New York, NY & Portage, MI

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