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Acquisition

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Nov 1993

Sells Feld Technologies to AmeriData

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Feld Technologies, now at 20 people and just under $2m in revenues, is acquired by Sage Technologies (which becomes AmeriData Technologies). Feld becomes  Chief Technology Officer. Feld Technologies becomes AmeriData Consulting. By 1997 AmeriData Consulting is a 400 person, $40 million organization and is sold to GE Capital.

7 Jun, 1998

Yahoo buys Viaweb

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Yahoo issues 455,000 common shares in exchange for Viaweb, valuing the deal around $49 million. Viaweb now has 21 full-time employees at its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters. Graham says it was an early prototype for today’s startups:

The reason we know that it’s possible to start a start-up with about $10,000 and someone to help with the paperwork is because that’s exactly what we had.

1999

Sells Tribal Voices

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McAfee sells Tribal Voices for about $17 million. He purchases properties in Arizona, Hawaii, Texas, and New Mexico and takes up Aerotrekking.

4 Jun, 2004

Erving Wonder acquired by Sanctuary

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Erving Wonder is acquired by Sanctuary Group Inc., which manages some of the world’s biggest artists. Carter and Erving are appointed as Executive Vice Presidents of Sanctuary Urban. Sanctuary CEO Mercuriadis:

Erving Wonder has made a tremendous impact in both the music and the film world having developed an impressive roster of multi-talented, commercially viable and important artists. Troy and J’s strategic business sense, relationships with the smartest executives in the industry and their ability to brand artists and entertainers made them our number one choice for the development of Sanctuary Urban.

Carter:

Our goal is to take artists to an unheard of level in the U.S. and internationally. The Erving Wonder/Sanctuary collaboration will create more opportunities to help artists transcend music genres, TV/Film, and establish unique branding options.

17 Aug, 2005

Acquired by Google

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Google buys Android Inc. for an undisclosed amount of money. Many employees, including co-founder Andy Rubin, continue to work on the project:

We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We’re thrilled to have them here.

9 Oct, 2006

Google buys YouTube

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Google has recently purchased a majority (more than 50%) of YouTube for $1.65 billion. All 67 of YouTube’s employees kept their positions. Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, says:

I’m confident that with this partnership we will have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.

A Message From Chad and Steve

31 Oct, 2006

Reddit bought by Condé Nast

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Condé Nast Publications acquires Reddit for a reported $20 million. All four Reddit employees relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital, which the company bought three months previously. Conde Naste:

Our goal will be to build Reddit as an independent company by collaborating with Wired through the integration of its core technology, and by offering partnerships to allow other companies to do the same.

At this time the site has 70,000 daily unique visitors and approximately 700,000 or so page views.

Sep 2007

Metropolis sale

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After publishing over 700 issues, the Devlins sell Metropolis to Lloyd, a New Zealand and Australian dual national, based in Japan. Over 14 years the magazine has grown to over 80 full-color pages every week made by a team of 35 staff from all over the world. The magazine has annual sales of ¥360 million and 20% profit, from hundreds of display and commercial classified advertisers and is, by far, Japan’s No 1 English magazine. A brief history of Metropolis is here.

Japan Today sold

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The Devlins sell Japan Today to GPlus Media, a Tokyo-based publishing company known for Real Estate Japan and GaijinPot, a community site for foreigners in Japan.

19 Nov, 2009

Skype purchase

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Ebay sells Skype at a value of $2.75 billion to Silver Lake Partners, which includes Joltid, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Andreessen Horowitz. SLP acquires a 70 percent stake in the Internet communication company. Andreesen notes:

Skype is gigantic and yet still a relatively small percentage of international call volume. This is, and ought to be, one of the most important companies on the Internet.

19 Aug, 2010

Intel buys McAfee Associates for $7.7 billion

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Intel pays $7.68 billion to acquire McAfee Associates. Intel hopes the purchase will separate its products from those of its rivals and accelerate its move into smartphones and consumer electronics. According to the research firm IDC, McAfee has 17.7 percent of the market for securing computing devices, trailing the market leader Symantec, which has 36.2 percent.

29 Sep, 2010

AOL acquires TechCrunch

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The company annouces the acquisition along with the purchases of instructional video site 5min and Thing Labs Inc. People familiar with the deal say it paid around $30 million for TechCrunch. Arrington is retained on a multi-year deal. AOL chief executive Armstrong:

The one thing that doesn’t change is people’s consumption of content.

Mar 2011

Karpeles buys Mt. Gox

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Mt-Gox-LogoKarpeles buys Mt. Gox from an unemployed software hacker named Jed McCaleb.  Before the site started trading in Bitcoins, it was an online marketplace where people could buy and sell cards for the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. Mt. Gox  is short for “Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange” McCaleb, nervous about regulatory scrutiny on bitcoin, wanted rid of the exchange and sold it to Karpeles in for no upfront fee, people with knowledge of the deal said. Karpeles told others he had later paid McCaleb a small fee, calling it “a very good deal”.

19 Apr, 2011

Dogster acquisition

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Say Media buys the company. Financial terms aren’t disclosed. Say Media:

This acquisition marks an important milestone in the evolution of our company

Sep 2012

HootSuite acquires Seesmic

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The companies don’t disclose valuation. Seesmic’s latest incarnation, as a social media cross-posting tool, is in line with HootSuite’s business. VentureBeat reports that Seesmic has 30,000-40,000 uniques a month and may be treated as a new product by HootSuite. HootSuite CEO Holmes:

I have always had a lot of respect for Seesmic’s CEO, Loïc Le Meur, and the role Seesmic has played in advancing social business. We are thrilled to welcome Seesmic’s users into the HootSuite family.

12 Oct, 2013

Acquires Vine

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Vine LogoTwitter acquires Vine, a service that allows users to upload video clips up to six seconds long, before its official launch. The company spends $30,000,000 on the site. The three developers of Vine, Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll, are all able to keep their positions at the company. Hofmann says:

Our companies share similar values and goals; like Twitter, we want to make it easier for people to come together to share and discover what’s happening in the world. We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it’s through a 140-character Tweet or a six-second video.

19 Jun, 2014

Acquires SnappyTV

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Twitter announces its acquisition of SnappyTV, a platform for clipping and editing small segments of TV shows. This allows Twitter users to easily share TV clips with their followers:

As Twitter has grown as the companion to live events and broadcast media, SnappyTV will help partners and brands bring the best videos into the conversation, when it matters most.

Using SnappyTV to Create Instant Highlights of Live TV

Jul 2014

Acquires Songza

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Google acquires Songza, a service that creates soundtracks tailored to people’s changing moods, and plans to blend Songza’s technology into its own music streaming service. This service will cost $10 per month. Financial terms of the deal are not disclosed. Songza:

We can’t think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do.

 

2 Jul, 2014

Acquires LiveRail

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Facebook acquires LiveRail, an advertising technology company that creates video ads for websites and apps. LiveRail customers include companies such as Major League Baseball, Gannett, DailyMotion and ABC Family.

We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month.