Facebook acquires ShareGrove

Facebook is acquiring the assets of ShareGrove, a business that allows users to share conversations, web pages, pictures and video with groups they choose. All participants in a Sharegrove conversation see the same thing at the same time.

Seed funding came from Elm Street Ventures, whose Managing Partner, Rob Bettigole, sat on the company’s board of directors.

ShareGrove’s announcement reads, “We’re happy to announce that we’ve reached an agreement for Facebook to acquire our assets, and that we’re joining the Facebook engineering team! We’ve always thought that Facebook had a great product, and through this acquisition process, we’ve found out that there’s a great team behind it. Now we’re excited to bring some of that Sharegroviness that you know and love to Facebook.”

Location: USA, San Mateo, CA

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Thomson Reuters acquires Point Carbon

Thomson Reuters has agreed to acquire Point Carbon A/S, a Norwegian-based leading provider of essential trading analytics, news and content for the energy and environmental markets.

This acquisition strengthens Thomson Reuters offerings to the energy sector through the combination of Point Carbon’s critical insight, market fundamentals and powerful analytics of key price drivers with Thomson Reuters leading news and pricing service.

Point Carbon provides banks, traders, portfolio managers, corporations and governments with critical insights based on deep industry knowledge and sophisticated modelling capabilities across the carbon, power, and gas markets. Point Carbon’s valuable demand, supply and price predictive models are based on proprietary data collection and are used by thousands of traders and analysts globally.

Technological advances are increasing the breadth, depth and frequency with which information is available on physical commodity flows and fundamentals, such as power production, consumption and weather, as well as events like political actions or operational outages. As global economic development continues to boost energy needs in a carbon constrained world, the combination of Thomson Reuters and Point Carbon will deliver the critical information and tools to allow market participants to optimize their business, investment and trading strategies in this evolving marketplace.

Shaun Sibley, Global Head of Commodities & Energy, Thomson Reuters, said, “This acquisition underscores Thomson Reuters commitment to the global energy markets and supports our growth plans for our leading commodity and energy business. Thomson Reuters clients will benefit from greater expertise and highly innovative technologies that will provide further granularity and a more sophisticated view of market conditions and their impact on price and trading. We will look to expanding our business to new customers, geographies and asset classes.”

Per-Otto Wold, CEO and Co-founder of Point Carbon, said, “Point Carbon has experienced excellent growth over the last 10 years and currently holds leading positions in our areas of focus. I truly believe that combining Thomson Reuters and Point Carbon is an excellent union of forces that will take Point Carbon to the next level.”

Following integration, Point Carbon content will be available through Thomson Reuters Eikon, the company’s new desktop offering to be launched later this year. In addition Reuters Insider, Thomson Reuters recently launched financial video platform, will begin broadcasting from Oslo and elsewhere around the world programs on the energy and environmental markets using Point Carbon’s analysts and proprietary data.

The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Location: Norway, Oslo

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Forbes Media acquires content news network True/Slant

Lewis DVorkin, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, has announced that Forbes Media is acquiring True/Slant. Dvorkin describes True/Slant as an original content news network. He envisaged a new model that combined the values and editorial standards of traditional news with the immediacy and interactivity of the digital medium.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The company’s original investors were Forbes and Fuse Capital.

Writing about the deal Dvorkin says, “The small True/Slant team, with more than 100 years of Web, publishing and TV experience, will now be working side-by-side with talented and dedicated journalists at Forbes Media. The goal: to work together to further develop a mindset around the  power of the Web and traditional news values. With hard work, we can implement new blogging platforms and more efficient digital, print and video content creation models; we can find better ways for audiences to engage with news and information; and we can pursue new integrative approaches for marketers and advertisers.”

He also writes, “The True/Slant team is quite proud that it helped lead the way in producing high quality content in an efficient manner. Now, we are incredibly excited about moving our ideas and passion on to the bigger stage of Forbes.com and all of Forbes Media’s other properties.”

Location: USA, New York, NY

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Beyond Commerce signs LOI to acquire WebYES!

Beyond Commerce has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire WebYES!. The Board of Directors of both companies has approved the acquisition and the transaction is anticipated to close within the next 30 business days.

WebYES! owns and operates a network of high-traffic web properties focused on finance, insurance, automotive products and services. The web properties contain advice for consumers and offer a variety of specialized products and services to suit their needs. 

In 2009 WebYES! had $19.5 million in revenues and $3.5 million of EBITDA. Currently, WebYES! is exceeding last year’s revenues in a year-to-date comparison. In the first quarter of 2010, WebYES! had over 2,000,000 unique visitors to web sites such as   www.zipinsurancerates.com, www.fastcashmatch.netwww.debtmatch.net, www.findyourcustomers.com, and www.aplusautoprotection.com , and has generated over 400,000 targeted customers. 

“We are very excited about becoming an integral part of Beyond Commerce,” states Brett Cravatt, CEO and Founder of WebYES!.  “In order to further improve our lead quality and results for our advertisers, we will leverage the proprietary customer acquisition platform that Beyond Commerce has acquired through its recent purchase of AdJuice.”

Location: USA, Henderson, NV

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Yahoo! buys Koprol

Yahoo!  has acquired Koprol. Koprol, a company headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, allows people to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser, making the service accessible to a larger percentage of mobile users. Once on Koprol, people can “check-in” to their current location and see where others are and what they are doing. The service helps people find local businesses, such as popular shops or restaurants, based on user ratings including a “thumbs-up” feature to elevate favorite places to the top of the ranking. Users can also start or join discussions based on particular locations and invite friends to participate, creating a unique city-based social mobile community resource.

Yahoo! will continue to invest in evolving Koprol’s service, such as the newly introduced BlackBerry application, and expects to announce new mobile applications for both local and global mobile platforms in the future.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Location: USA, Sunnyvale, CA & Indonesia, Jakarta

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Related articles:

  • Yahoo! to acquire Associated Content Posted on May 19, 2010
  • Yahoo! to acquire Citizen Sports Posted on March 17, 2010
  • Monster Worldwide acquires the assets of Yahoo! HotJobs for $225 million Posted on February 4, 2010
  • The Yahoo!/Maktoob acquisition deal has officially closed Posted on November 12, 2009
  • Constant Contact acquires NutshellMail

    Constant Contact has acquired privately held NutshellMail. the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    NutshellMail is a free service that makes it easy to monitor, manage and interact with friends, fans and customers through social media. It works by collecting and organizing the latest messages and activity from social networks — including Twitter?, Facebook and LinkedIn — into an interactive email snapshot that is delivered directly to your email inbox. Users can customize the content they want to track, add search terms, and choose how frequently they want to receive email updates. Signing up for a NutshellMail11 account takes just a few minutes, and the time savings start right away.

    With NutshellMail, users can easily monitor and interact with social networks all in one place, including posting updates right from their email inbox. The free service helps busy professionals keep track of critical conversations about their company and the competition, and keeps them informed about what their customers are talking about — all from the place where they spend most of their online time.

    “We started NutshellMail to help solve the problem of social network overload. As part of the Constant Contact family, we’re going to help some of the busiest people on the planet, small business owners, turn what might seem like social media chaos into a smart marketing tool for growing their business. It’s like a DVR for your social networking activity,” said Mark Schmulen, co-founder of NutshellMail.

    Location: USA, Waltham, MA

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    Swaptree.com raises $6 million

    Swaptree.com, has completed a $6 million financing round led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation from numerous private investors. The capital raised will be used for new hires and marketing initiatives focused on fueling growth. The new round of financing brings Swaptree.com’s total capital raised to date to $11.95 million.

    “Swaptree.com is poised to become synonymous with the category of ‘online swap’ in the same way eBay has become synonymous with ‘online auctions’,” said Jeff Bennett, CEO of Swaptree.com. “I look forward to making Boston-based Swaptree.com an iconic Internet business and one that will positively impact the health of the planet.”

    Swaptree.com its offers its members an easy, feel good way for people to recycle the stuff they have and get things they want while reducing consumption of new products.

    The company has also announced that Jeff Bennett been named Chief Executive Officer. Bennett was the Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer of NameMedia.

    Location: USA, Boston, MA

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    Cloud based video game streaming service Gaikai raises $10 million

    Gaikai, a cloud based video game streaming service has raised $10 million from existing investors TriplePoint Capital, Rustic Canyon Partners, Benchmark Capital and an un-named partner have invested. Nate Redmond of Rustic Canyon Partners will join the board.

    Gaikai’s cloud based streaming service will allow gamers to experience the latest video games via the Internet at any time, through multiple devices and platforms. It is due to launch in North America in the near future.
    “The involvement of TriplePoint Capital, Benchmark, Rustic Canyon Partners and our un-named investor allows us to gear up to our US launch, support more devices and deliver a service that will dramatically reduce the cost of acquiring new customers for video game publishers and retailers worldwide,” said David Perry, CEO of Gaikai Inc.

    Location: USA, Los Angeles, CA

    Ref: F231109-461

    Related article – Games on demand company Gaikai raises $5M Posted on January 7, 2010

    A few fundings we missed this week – Babble, Grockit & The Hotlist

    Babble Media, a magazine and parenting community site for new parents, has completed a Series B round of $3 million in equity funding. The round was led by Village Ventures with Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital participating. Read more at citybizlist Boston abd at TechCrunch

    Location: USA, New York, NY

    Grockit, a social network for studying that uses collaborative learning and develops adaptive programs for students, announced today that it has completed a $7 million round of funding led by Atlas Venture. Existing investors Benchmark Capital and Integral Capital Partners also participated.

    Location: USA, San Francisco, CA

    The Hotlist, the first geo-social aggregator that shows people what’s going on today, tomorrow and throughout the week among their personal networks, today announced that the company closed $800,000 in angel financing led by Centurion Holdings. Funds from the angel round will be used to support The Hotlist’s platform development and formation of an expanded service suite. Read more in the release.

    Location: USA, New York, NY

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    Payvment raises $1.5 million

    Payvment, a company that provides a free Facebook application that allows businesses, organizations and individuals to set up virtual storefronts, has raised $1.5 million in a Series A funding round led by BlueRun Ventures. Angel investor Dave McClure has also joined as an individual investor

    BlueRun investments include PayPal, Slide, WiderThan, Wavemarket, Fwix and Chomp. McClure is an investor in over 50 startup companies including,  Mint (acquired by Intuit), SlideShare, Twilio and Simply Hired.

    Location: USA, San Francisco, CA

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    Related article: Payvment has raised $1.15 million Posted April 6, 2010