Netvibes, the San Francisco–based startup that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS feed dashboards, announced on Wednesday evening it has been acquired by French enterprise software firm Systèmes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Read more »
Klout, the San Francisco-based startup that measures people’s “influence” across a variety of social networks, has made its first acquisition with the purchase of Blockboard, a Twitter-like mobile app that functions as a community bulletin board for posting messages viewable to your neighbors. Read more »
It’s been a big part of the Internet picture for well over a decade, but right now e-commerce is really hitting its stride, according to a new report out of CB Insights and the BizTech@Wharton Conference. M&A activity is surging and investment dollars are growing steadily. Read more »
Unsubscribe.com, the Los Angeles–based startup that makes security and privacy tools for email and social networking applications, has been acquired by TrustedID, a Palo Alto, Calif.–based credit and identity protection technology firm. Financial terms of the deal have not been announced. Read more »
Salesforce.com on Monday announced its acquisition of Model Metrics, a company that provides mobile and social cloud consulting services. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. The deal will “add mobile and social expertise” to Salesforce’s current offerings, the company says. Read more »
Facebook announced Tuesday its latest talent acquisition: Strobe Corp., a San Francisco-based mobile app development startup focused on HTML5 apps. Strobe was born out of SproutCore, an open-source JavaScript framework built by engineer Charles Jolley in 2007 while he was a full-time engineer at Apple Read more »
Venture capitalists have generally given semiconductor startups the cold shoulder for years now in favor of the web and software spaces. But LSI Corporation’s $400 acquisition of VC-backed chip startup Sandforce could encourage more VCs to warm up to chip technology once again. Read more »
Cardpool, the San Francisco-based startup that lets people buy, sell and trade unused gift cards, has been acquired by Blackhawk Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of grocery giant Safeway. Details about the deal are scarce, but Cardpool co-founder Anson Tsai says his investors “are quite happy.” Read more »
With all the buzz around Yahoo recently, its financial conference call with analysts and investors could have been a big event. But interim CEO Tim Morse made it clear that investors looking for answers about Yahoo’s CEO search and M&A options were out of luck. Read more »
Autonomy’s impending acquisition by Hewlett-Packard is nearly done. The controversial $10.3 billion deal was cleared by regulators in the U.S. and Australia on Thursday, according to reports. Autonomy shareholders still have until Monday morning 10:00 a.m. U.K time to weigh in. Read more »
Exclusive: Group Commerce, a New York City-based company that sells a software platform to let publishers host their own daily deal applications, has acquired geo-location startup Socialight. The Socialight team and technology will be put toward fleshing out Group Commerce’s mobile strategy, said CEO Jonty Kelt. Read more »
Hewlett-Packard plans to spend some $10.25 billion to acquire Autonomy, the United Kingdom–based software and services company. HP’s balance sheet currently has $13 billion in cash. Why is the company making such a big bet? According to HP’s CEO, Leo Apotheker, it’s now or never. Read more »
Google has snapped up The Dealmap, an aggregator of nearby shopping deals, in an acquisition that furthers its Google Offers ambitions. The purchase, whose price was not disclosed, shows that Google is proceeding even without its unsuccessful $6 billion bid for Groupon last year. Read more »
When Google discontinued support for QR codes in its Places product earlier this year, many saw it as an early death knell for the barcode scanning technology. But Google’s latest acquisition is evidence that the company may not be completely abandoning QR technology just yet. Read more »
Twitter announced Tuesday it has acquired BackType, an analytics platform aimed at helping companies and brands gauge their social media impact. The possible rationale for the deal is BackType’s Storm real-time big data processing platform that could help Twitter offer well-defined analytics. Read more »
Zynga has shown a notable uptick in acquisitions in recent months. But although much has been made of the volume and frequency of Zynga’s M&A activity, the S-1 Zynga filed Friday for its planned IPO revealed exactly how savvy it has been in making those deals. Read more »
In Silicon Valley, happy days are indeed here again: Investors are feeling generous, the IPO market is percolating, and the tech industry’s biggest players have worked up a very healthy appetite for mergers and acquisitions. Read more »
Bunchball, the social gaming software company, has raised $6.5 million in a new funding round. The San Jose, Calif.-based startup has recently received “knocks on the door” from potential acquirers, but opted to raise money instead to bet on growing more, CEO Jim Scullion told me. Read more »
Google’s acquisition of social analytics technology startup PostRank indicates the company is also looking beyond its own walls to get its social efforts off the ground. Scouting for fresh talent externally is a smart move for Google, an aging player in an increasingly cutthroat industry. Read more »
Gamification startup Badgeville expects to book $10 million in sales for 2011, its first year in business, according to CEO Kris Duggan. He claims that being the new kid on the gamification block is an asset. “We’ve built this over last year with modern approaches.” Read more »
Twitter officially confirmed its long-rumored acquisition of TweetDeck on Wednesday morning. Twitter/TweetDeck rumors have been flying around for weeks now, so lots of folks have had time to form opinions about the tie-up. Here are some of the more interesting takes on the situation. Read more »
We’re hearing that Cisco is shutting down Eos, a social publishing platform aimed at media and entertainment companies, as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts. While Eos was by all accounts a cool service, shuttering it is a smart move from a strategic perspective. Read more »
LinkedIn made its NYSE debut Thursday morning with a bang, with an IPO that made $352.8 million for the company. The question now is: What will LinkedIn buy with its new cash? Here’s a short list of startups that could make it onto LinkedIn’s shopping list. Read more »
Photobucket wants to reclaim a spot at the top of the crowded photo and video sharing space, and it’s prepared to open its wallet to do so. The company is actively looking at potential acquisition targets, CEO Tom Munro told me in an interview this week. Read more »
[qi:115] Suddenly, it’s mating season in the tech sector. Xerox is paying $6.4 billion for a piece of the cloud, Adobe is hooking up with Omniture and Intuit with Mint, and that may just be the start. As Om pointed out, this is good news for […] Read more »
