July 15, 2008
Yesterday Twitter casually announced on its blog the acquisition of Summize, a Virginia-based real-time search startup calling it "A Perfect Match." I could not agree with them more as they wasted little time and have launched a new search Twitter Search tool at search.twitter.com. If you are a heavy Twitter user then you have encountered problems using Twitter as they at times have had to turn off certain features leaving many to find other means, like Summize as shown in this recent tweet. Congrats to the Summize team as it does look to be an ideal exit and integration into Twitter.
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May 25, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending May 25, 2008.
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May 18, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending May 18, 2008.
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April 15, 2008
My first day working at AOL back in the fall of 2006 I had the pleasure of having lunch with Tony Conrad as he was visiting to start working with the AOL. Since then, Sphere which I covered previously when it launched in May 2006, worked with both AOL News and myAOL Mgnet Recommendations. It is a pleasure to see that AOL has finally acquired Sphere for an undisclosed amount.
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March 13, 2008
Wow! AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. I think this is a smart move for AOL as Bebo is currently the third largest social network on the Web behind Facebook and MySpace. With AIM offering one of the larger social graphs on the Web but a turnstile of online social networking site attempts in the last two years. It looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in the space which adds to the large number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.
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March 3, 2008
Compete, the Boston-based web analytics and online market research firm startup founded in 2000, was just acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), a leading market information and insight company for $75 Million. Compete leverages clickstream data to determine traffic, engagement and other valuable analytics. According to the press release TNS plans to leverage this data to provide insight based on online and offline behavior and on consumer attitudes. Congrats to Compete on the recent acquisition!
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February 17, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending February 17, 2008.
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February 10, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending February 10, 2008.
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February 5, 2008
Super Tuesday! Did you get the load of election action you were looking for? If not, you might still be able to catch some thanks in part to a map mashup that TechCrunch reported Google teamed up with Twitter to provide. The Google Maps Twitter mashup is similar to Twittervision but for political related twits (a twit is a Twitter message) so you can track the today's Super Tuesday elections on real-time on a map.
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February 4, 2008
AOL has just announced the acquisition of Goowy Media, a San Diego-based Flash startpage, widget and desktop application startup. One of Goowy's bi-products is yourminis a slick startpage that I previously reviewed and named one of the best beta products of 2006. It is pretty rad.
Goowy's widgets can be distributed to just about any page or social network on the Web (as shown below) which is comparable to offerings by ClearSpring, Widgetbox and Gigya, which have also been getting buzz in the widget advertising space. These distribution capabilities will come in handy on myAOL as well as helping to syndicate AOL network content. Goowy also offers widget metrics in a dashboard that closely resembles the feed metrics dashboard of FeedBurner which was acquired by Google for $150 million.
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January 15, 2008
If you have ever looked for concert, theater or sporting event tickets then you probably have heard of TicketsNow and Ticketmaster. TicketsNow an online tickets site founded in the Chicago northwest suburb now based in Rolling Meadows and Crystal Lake, Illinois has just announced it was acquired by InterActiveCorp’s Ticketmaster for $265 million as just reported on TECH cocktail.
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