SOMEWHAT FRANK

Amazon To Acquire Zappos For $807 Million

I just got word that Amazon has acquired Zappos for over $800 Million. Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos just released a video sharing the Amazon story and mentions Zappos (above). Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the good news from his perspective too.

Zappos has been setting an example for companies to follow by putting customers first and embracing social media religiously to do so. CEO Tony Hsieh is a big Twitter user and you can follow him at @Zappos. This past year Zappos has also been on a mainstream media tear, sharing its culture and views on happiness along with selling LOTS of shoes and gear along the way.

Over the past year, I have worked with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on a few occasions, co-hosting a CES Kickoff party in Vegas and I even got a suitcase from Zappos at SXSW. Not to mention, seeing him speak at SXSW and Startup2Startup among other industry events.

Showing our phones at CES Kickoff event. Photo by BrianSolis.com

Yep, It's True, AOL To Acquire SocialThing

A few weeks ago Mike Arrington gave me a call asking me if, my employer, AOL, had acquired SocialThing. Though it struck very close to home, I had to bite my tongue since the deal had not yet closed and did not comment on the matter. Now that is has been officially released, I can. It is true, AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire SocialThing, the Boulder, Colorado based social aggregating lifestream startup. The terms are not disclosed and the acquisition is still subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions.

I met founders Matt "indiekid" Galligan, Ben Brightwell and the team as they demo'ed at TECH cocktail Boulder on March 6th. Matt is originally from Illinois, like I am, and moved to Boulder to create SocialThing as part of the TechStars incubator program. I got a preview of the SocialThing private beta at TECH cocktail (shown in the video below) which was a few days before they launched at SXSW Interactive and were written up favorably on TechCrunch as being easier to use than FriendFeed. I was impressed by what this startup had created as it offered a wrapper for all your social activities making it easy to post to multiple networks at once. SocialThing is integrated with 13 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr and is currently still in private beta.

Video: Clearspring Widget Startup Explained

Clearspring, a Virginia-based startup, offers a number of widget solutions for publishers and advertisers. I got to catchup with Clearspring Community Manager and genunine good guy, Justin Thorp as he "tells all" about the widget making startup. Is Clearspring soon to be acquired? Watch the video and maybe you will find out.

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Twitter Acquires Summize Real-Time Search

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.

The deal is said to be worth $15M stock and cash and depending upon how long the team stays at Twitter they could benefit from Twitter eventually getting acquired too. Congrats to the Virginia/DC-based Summize team who are also DC TECH cocktailers as it does look to be an ideal exit and integration into Twitter.

NASA Lands On Mars, Google Health Launches, AOL/Bebo Deal Done, FriendFeed Adds Rooms, Twitter Database Crashes & Living Public Lives

Photo of the Week: Happy Memorial Day! Have a cupcake. Photo credit: Megan.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.25.2008

CNet and Ars Technica Acquired, Life Streaming Architecture, Crowdsourcing Workflow, Ad Design Tactics & A Flickr Case Study

Photo of the Week: This is a photo of the TECH cocktail RACING Pine Wood Derby car which took 6th place out of 41 at this years Threadless.com Threadle Manss this past weekend.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 05.18.2008

AOL Buys Sphere For Content Recommendations

My first day working at AOL back in the fall of 2006 I had the pleasure of having lunch with Sphere CEO and founder 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 to offer related content recommendations. It is a pleasure to see that AOL has finally acquired Sphere for an undisclosed amount.

Surprise! AOL Buys Bebo for $850 million

AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. Wow!  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 profile site attempts in the last two years it looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in a solution with a lot users and page views. This just adds to the a number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.

Compete Cashes In, Acquired By TNS

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!

Microsoft Buys Danger, Micro-Hoo Drama, Recruiting 3.0, Facebook Terrorist Recruiter?, Semantic Web 101 & TECH cocktail News

Photo of the Week: Valentine's week was ... AWE SOME as this photo by Lara shows.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.17.2008

MySpace Opens Platform, Google News Local, Plaxo & Bebo Rumors, Yahoo Live, FoxyTunes Acquired & Customers Turned Evangelists

Photo of the Week: I got a chance to catch up with some old friends this week in Silicon Valley including a trip to Atherton when I snapped this photo.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.10.2008

Google Maps Twitter Super Tuesday

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. Acquisition next?

AOL Gets Goowy, Acquires Widget Startup

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.

TicketsNow Sold To IAC’s Ticketmaster

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.