Something Simpler, a Vancouver-based start-up, has acquired the assets (including intellectual property) of RSS company PubSub, which after a promising start flailed and fell out of favor.
The deal involves IP, equipment, brands & trademarks, but not the company. According to our sources, this is an equity-for-assets deal, and one of PubSub investors, Polygon, is also investing in Something Simpler.
Last year there was talk of KnowNow acquiring PubSub, but those talks fell apart. Something Simpler is about a year old and lists telecom executive Ian Bell as its president and founder. Derek Ferguson is also listed as a co-founder, and Lance Tracey is the CEO of the company, which is being very cryptic about its business plans.
From what we’ve been able to learn, the company is building tools that would allow folks to filter large volumes of real-time information and filter it for consumption in manageable chunks.
Personalization is one of the missing ingredients in the new Web, and it seems Something Simpler is planning to address that by its plans to soon introduce a Facebook widget. A full relaunch of PubSub is in the cards for early 2008. Longtime PubSub CEO Salim Ismail now runs Yahoo’s Brickhouse project.
5 comments so far
7:01 PM PT
[...] 2.0; or rather, the fact that there will soon be such a thing. We announced via TechCrunch and GigaOM that we have acquired a number of the assets of PubSub Concepts, Inc. from the asset holder and [...]
8:54 PM PT
Hmmm…Personalization of RSS feeds would be nice.
2:07 PM PT
I resent being called a “Telecom Executive”.
=)
2:08 PM PT
Somedays I need more day…every day I need more filtered data.
8:17 PM PT
hey, good news! did pubsub acquire its abandoned india subsidiary as well? apparently, the older PubSub US management has caused multiple statutory violations in India and this change may improve the situation.
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