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Acquisitions

By Adrianne Jeffries 12/13/11 4:59pm

Acquisitions

(twitter.com/justglew)

TopGuest Went to Cali and All It Got Was This Strategic Exit

Considering a move to the West Coast, but not sure if you should do it due to all the Alley-boosting blog posts in Betabeat and your Tumblr feed? Here’s an Alley-to-Valley success story for you. TopGuest, a New York startup that launched in the beginning of 2010 to add social and mobile features to consumer loyalty programs, just had its big exit: an acquisition by San Francisco-based global customer service software company ezRez for an undisclosed sum.

CEO Geoff Lewis moved out to California with his two co-founders about a year ago to work on TopGuest, which raised $2 million and sported Peter Thiel as an advisor and Silicon Valley all-stars Keith Rabois and Ron Conway as angel investors, according to AllThingsD. Read More

By Ben Popper 11/21/11 12:45pm

Acquisitions

If you like these glasses, you may enjoy my blog

First Interview: Chris Dixon Talks eBay’s Purchase of Hunch

When it comes to big data and personal recommendations, Hunch and eBay are a match made in heaven. Both work with mountains of unstructured data and hope to improve user recommendations through social signals.

At least, that is what Chris Dixon and eBay CTO Mark Carges had to say in a phone call with Betabeat this morning, following news of the acquisition. But the pair laid out a compelling case for why the purchase makes sense.

“eBay is a very unique retailer,” Mr. Dixon said. “When grandma posts a sweater for sale, it doesn’t have a metadata to help sort and identify it. In working to understand user’s taste on the open web, this is the challenge we have been solving at Hunch.”

Something like 70% of items on eBay don’t have traditional metadata like product IDs. “We have been working with our own data on consumer behavior to power recommendations,” said eBay CTO Mark Carges. “Hunch brings in some really complimentary work that they have been doing with social signals.”  Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/22/11 9:20am

Acquisitions

martocci

The Agony, the Ecstasy, and the Karaoke: Twitter Reactions to the GroupMe/Skype Acquisition

When the news broke yesterday evening that Skype acquired hometown start-up GroupMe, New York’s digerati took the party to Twitter. Indeed the acquisition and its hefty price tag, which Betabeat’s sources pegged between $50 million and $100 million, caused such a stir among a certain swath of tech circles that “GroupMe” even made into a New York City Twitter trending topic last night–albeit below penetrating questions plaguing tweeters such as, “Chris Brown OR Justin Bieber.”

The deal was the first major exit for Lerer Ventures, Thrive Capital and BoxGroup’s David Tisch, so much of the tweeting action consisted of ebullient pats on the back. But a few notes of skepticism arose from the din. In case you were too busy watching Libyan rebels end a 40-year dictatorship, here’s what you missed. Read More

By Ben Popper 8/21/11 6:32pm

Acquisitions

Jared and Steve, two awesome, SMS, totally same size bros.

GroupMe Bought by Skype for More than $50 Million

GroupMe just celebrated its one year anniversary, and founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hecht certainly had something to smile about. A deal in the works for months was just completed, with global VOIP giant Skype acquiring GroupMe for an undisclosed price north of $50 million.

The two co-founders have scored positions at Microsoft but will run the company from New York. And while GroupMe will remain independent, it is likely to become core to Skype’s efforts in mobile, SMS and social. Skype’s over 560 million global users will certainly do a lot to boost GroupMe’s profile and user network if the two companies are deeply integrated. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 5/26/11 11:26am

Acquisitions

yodeler-2-web

Local Yodle: No Biz Is Too Small

Yodle, the New York-based search marketing agency that targets local and small businesses, is going after the nickels and dimes. The company announced an acquisition of an Austin-based agency, ProfitFuel, that targets businesses spending less than $500 on marketing a month.

Yodle plans to ramp that end of the business way, way up, doubling the 220 employees at what was ProfitFuel over the next 18 months. Yodle itself only has around 300 employees, the Austin-American Statesman reported. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 5/12/11 12:34pm

Acquisitions

Andrew Ferenci, 24-year old founder of Spinback.

Spinback Poised to Close Series A When Buddy Media Snapped Them Up

Buddy Media, the Facebook managing platform for businesses, announced this morning it had acquired the five-person New York start-up Spinback, which makes a social media plug-in and analytics dashboard that customers can enable by embedding a few lines of code on their web sites. “I’ve never seen a product that does what it does. It does what four or five technologies do in one,” said Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow when Betabeat reached him by phone this morning at Disney World, where he was attending the Mashable Connect conference with Spinback CEO Andrew Ferenci. Read More