A couple of days ago Steve Case appeared on CNBC regarding the launching of his new website, RevolutionHealth.com. One of the questions that Case was asked is if RevolutionHealth will pursue an IPO. Case agreed that this is a direction that he wanted to follow.

According to alarm:clock, RevolutionHealth acquired CarePages, a portal that allows families to create virtual meeting places. CarePages also allows families to share news and 52 photos. CarePages receives about 30 million page views per month and has deals with over 500 hospitals. CarePages was VC-funded by Woodland Venture Management and Hopewell Ventures.

RevolutionHealth’s parent company is Revolution LLC. Revolution LLC was launched in April 2005 and aims to build companies rather than just investing in them. RevolutionHealth has partnerships with The American Academy of Family Physicians and the Columbia University Medical Center.

Steve Case is a co-founder and former CEO/Chairman of America Online. Case played a major role in the Time Warner and AOL merger back in 2000.

[Previous Pulse 2.0 coverage of RevolutionHealth]

Google announced yesterday that they have acquired Marratech’s software.  Marratech is a global company based in Sweden “which enable remote groups and individuals to collaborate and interact over the internet [Source: About Marratech].”

Google will be collaborating and depending on Marratech engineers based in Sweden as far as research and development is concerned for the software tools.

WebEx is a company that provides similar solutions which was recently acquired for $3.2 billion by Cisco Systems. 

Are you pondering what I’m pondering?  The tools gained by Google’s recent acquisition of Marratech software and Tonic Systems (developer of online presentation software) combined could make one kick-ass online application.  Hopefully we’ll start hearing more about this as the summer passes.

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt: “I think most people would agree that PowerPoint is the de-facto application for presentations, and one of the best programs Microsoft has (that, and Excel). If Google only provides online support for its new software, the issues are the same as for its other offerings: No network equals no work. I would imagine that Google could get good traction if the software supports imports/exports to PowerPoint, but I doubt it will take any significant market share away from Microsoft for quite some time. The great thing about Google’s offerings is the built-in ability to share between anyone, which totally blows Microsoft out of the water. Google needs to catch up on features, and Microsoft needs to find a way to share as easily as Google.”

A couple of days ago, Google announced that they had acquired Tonic Systems. This move was not necessarily made to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint directly, but to add to the arsenal of online office applications that Google already supports such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

The new software is expected to release by this summer and is practically run on JAVA. This announcement was made officially on the Google Blog. Google Operating System, a blog that focuses on the changes made by Google on regular basis discovered in the code of Google Docs & Spreadsheets an error message displaying:
var MSG_POPUP_BLOCKER=”Presently is unable to launch your presentation in full-screen mode. Check your pop-up blocker settings.”;

This is an indication that the code name used for the software is Presently. This may actually be the official name for the upcoming software too, but it is just speculation for now.

 
Tabblo, a social network where users can upload photos and integrate stylish templates along with those photos has announced today that they are being acquired by Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ).  Hewlett Packard’s appeal in the purchase was fueled particularly by Tabblo’s large network of 150 thousand tabblos (users) and 5 million uploaded photos.  The company started in May 2006.

Tabblo.com will stick around and will be applying new technologies as a result of the acquisition.  HP also owns Snapfish.com, which is also a photo-sharing website.   Tabblo and Snapfish will remain independent of each other.  The founder of Tabblo is Antonio Rodriguez.

“Tabblo is a very cool company with a great product. They’ve got Flickr-like community, they blogged critically about Yahoo while sponsoring Techmeme and I’ll tell you – I often show off the Tabblo of the kids in my family to people who visit my house. Naysers called them an also-ran but they deserve a big congrats today” stated Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast.

The announcement was made official by the Tabblog.

Adscape Media is a company based in San Francisco that offers dynamic advertising with storyline integration. Since Adscape Media offers in-game advertising, Google felt that this could add value to publishers and advertisers. Current partners of Adscape will continue to get paid.

The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Adscape is currently in discussions with large and small firms for game development and advertising integration. Whether this service will become a part of AdSense is also still a mystery.

This post was made official by the Google Blog and the Adscape Media homepage.

Today, it was announced that Cisco Systems, one of the world’s leading routing device manufacturers has acquired WebEx, a web conferencing company. The amount that Cisco paid was $3.2 billion, an amount that eclipses some of the more recent acquisitions (i.e. MySpace for $580 million and YouTube for near $1.7 billion).

WebEx was founded by Subrah S. Iyer and Min Zhu and is based in Santa Clara, CA. WebEx has several products that include WebEx Meeting Center, WebEx Event Center, and WebEx Training Center. WebEx had acquired Intranets.com in 2005 and had announced to launch a business version of AOL Instant Messenger last year using the conference tools of WebEx.

Currently WebEx Communications, Inc. has a market cap of $2.82 billion and trades under the NASDAQ: WEBX symbol. GigaOM has some further insight regarding why Cisco would actually buy the company. In summary, Om Malik summarized that this move by Cisco is a way for them to stay competitive with Microsoft’s VOIP efforts.

Yesterday, Microsoft had announced that they had acquired TellMe. TechCrunch had speculated and then later confirmed the rumor and it was made official by a Microsoft press release.

“Speech is universal, simple and holds incredible promise as a key interface for computing,” said CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer. “Tellme brings to Microsoft the talent, technology and proven experience in speech that will enable us to deliver a new wave of products and revolutionize human-computer interaction.” The price is unknown, but Om Malik mentioned that he heard a rumor that it was greater than $800 million and less than $1 billion.

TellMe was founded in 1999 by Mike McCue. McCue is also currently the CEO. According to some Wikipedia analysts, “Early venture-funded competitors included BeVocal, Hey Anita and Quack.com, which was acquired by America Online to power its competing service AOL By Phone.” Tellme has processed almost 2 billion unique calls. The company is based in Mountain View, CA.

PBwiki, the website that makes creating wikis simple and password-protection possible also has announced the acquisition of Schtuff, another easy-creation wiki website. PBwiki is a fairly young start-up, created in June 2005 and within 48 hours of launch, 1000 new wikis were made.

Schtuff.com was created by JanRain, a team of 11 people who have been actively working on OpenID protocol. Schtuff.com has about 1 million users and will add OpenID to PBwiki. The acquisition was made by means of customer revenue and not by the venture capital money.

Mohr Davidow Ventures are the ones who invested $2 million in PBwiki and Ron Conway and Chris Yeh plugged in $100K. PBwiki also competes with Wikia, a website created by Jimmy Wales who also founded the concept of the wiki.

[Source: StartupSquad / PBwiki Blog]

Today it was announced that Microsoft Corporation has hinted at becoming more active in the healthcare sector by possibly acquiring Medstory Inc. Medstory is a health search engine start-up in Foster City, CA. Medstory’s search software algorithms revolve around an ability to detect medical and health-related articles within Internet medical journals, government documents, and also the newly featured Wall Street Journal and Breastcancer.org articles.

This acquisition also indicates Microsoft’s intention to “improve the consumer experience in health care” stated Peter Neupert, VP of Health Strategy at Microsoft. “Search is a critical part of that better end-to-end experience for consumers.”

So, who is the competition? RevolutionHealth.com is a competitor and is backed by Steve Case, former chairman & also the co-founder of America Online. WebMD is one of the conglomerates out there right now that has a market cap of $3.05 billion and has made an annual revenue of $253 mill this past year.

Google is also another player in the field. “Using the Google Co-op platform, Google and the health community have labeled sites and pages across the web making it easier for users to refine their health queries and locate the medical information they need” wrote Adam Bosworth on the Google Blog.

From first-hand experiences, I believe that many people do not understand the importance of technology and its contribution to healthcare until they know someone who has been diagnosed with a disease or shows irregular symptoms. For example, I had a relative get a call this past weekend from the Er because he had high potassium levels. So the first place we turned was WebMD to see what could alleviate the high potassium levels.

I believe that there is a correlation between this news and the regular announcements made by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I also believe this would be one of Microsoft’s smartest acquisitions compared to some of their previous.

Today, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) has confirmed their acquisition of StubHub in a press release.  Earlier today, I wrote about how eBay could make the announcement as early as tomorrow, but eBay clearly wanted to announce it sooner.  eBay is going to buy StubHub for $285 million + $25 million (in StubHub books). 

“StubHub has been extremely successful in the online tickets segment, and it’s a perfect complement to eBay’s tickets business,” stated Bill Cobb the president of eBay North America Marketplaces. “Together we can strengthen both businesses and provide fans with more choice and better service.”

The acquisiton is expected to be fully completed by the end of the first quarter in 2007.  Whether eBay will keep StubHub independent or not is still yet to be known. 

MyBlogLog, the service that allows you to see who is reading your blog has been officially acquired by Yahoo! Inc. for $10 million according to Forbes. MyBlogLog has found its community-powered services used on the homepage of many blogs. MyBlogLog also monitors reader actions such as what pages that the readers move to next. MyBlogLog.com is based in Orlando, FL.

“This closes the loop between readers and publishers,” stated Bradley Horowitz . “Every publisher wants to know his readers, and the readers want to find out about each other. It’s the power of implicit networking.” Remember Horowitz’s [correction: Bradley Garlinghouse's] ‘Peanut Butter Manifesto Memo?’ MyBlogLog will remain independent, but Yahoo! users would be able to access MyBlogLog with their own accounts and MyBlogLog users would be able to access Flickr and Yahoo! Answers. Over 45,000 blogs use MyBlogLog and 1 million users [correction : 3 million users (see comment by Scott Rafer)] read through these blogs per day.

“The biggest thing in blog search is ego search – my name, the web sites I love,” stated MyBlogLog chairman, Scott Rafer. “People search Google and Wikipedia for information; with blogs, people look for cool things and serendipity.”

Although snagging information from MyBlogLog users would give Yahoo! a competitive advantage for tailoring advertisements to the clients that use MyBlogLog, Horowitz mentioned that this is not their intention. “The thing is growing like a weed in the viral pattern you want,” stated Horowitz. Using reader data for personal gain is not the direction Yahoo! wants to take in the case of MyBlogLog.
[Source: Forbes]

Hearst Magazines Digital Media announced today that they have officially acquired eCRUSH.com, Inc. eCRUSH is a social network for teens and adults. Through the acquisition, Hearst Magazines also gains other Internet properties, eSPIN and HighSchoolStyleBoard.

“We are thrilled to become a part of Hearst’s incredible network of teen brands and believe that it’s the perfect fit for the eCRUSH audience, as well as for our advertisers,” stated Amy Gibby, president of eCRUSH.com.

eCRUSH launched on February 14, 1999 (Valentine’s Day) and has matched 900,000 people through its 2,400,000 registered users. eSPIN is based on the popular Spin-the-Bottle game played by teenagers. The intention of eCRUSH is for the youth to flirt and make new friends online while respecting anonymity. eSPIN-the-Bottleâ„¢ has 1 million active users and is continuously growing.

HighSchoolStyleBoard is a photo-rating website targeted towards the youth as well. HighSchoolStyleBoard ranks users based on Best Smile, Best Hair, Most Goofy, Best Dressed, Most Emo, Most Preppy, Hottest Overall, etc. just like a high school yearbook.

Although financial details were not disclosed, I believe that it is north of $1.4 million since eCRUSH’s EBIT for 2006 was that amount. In February, Hearst is planning on launching three new teenager web companies and magazines including CosmoGIRL.com, Seventeen.com, and Teenmag.com.

I found this on a forum via Digg. The amount was not disclosed. On the forum, Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol and Ludvig Strigeus, the writer of µTorrent announced that “BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent’s exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent’s efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent’s expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.”

The forum also mentioned that µTorrent’s software will remain lightweight, but the acquisition had mainly taken place to for access to µTorrent’s user-base. Some of the Digg users that have commented on the post see the acquisition as a bad move, but others are hoping that through this acquisition, µTorrent will be compatible for Linux and the Mac.

Two Digg users, akarpo and ikonoclasm were talking about the possibilities of DRM clients being implemented into µTorrent. “BitTorrent Inc. signed a deal with the movie industry last week because the industry wants to stop piracy” stated Digg user, ikonoclasm.

On November 29, Mike Arrington at TechCrunch wrote about how BitTorrent raised $25 million.

On November 28, it was announced that NeuStar Inc. has
acquired UK-based mobile instant message provider, Followap Inc. for $139 million in cash. This acquisition was inspired by NeuStar’s prediction that Followap’s revenues for 2007 should be $25 million and should double the year after. In 2001, Followap raised $12 million in a second round of funding. The companies that have all invested in Followap include Sequoia Capital, Carmel Vetures, Koor Corporate Venture Capital, SVM Star Ventures Israel and Siemens Venture Capital [source].

NeuStar was created to face the technical challenges in the telecommunications sector ever since the U.S. government granted portability of local numbers in 1996. Today NeuStar is a global telecommunication company service provider that provides services such as network optimization and inter-network call origination and termination. NeuStar also provides services that relate to wireless data and VoIP.

Followap has over 160 million subscribers within 17 network operators and offers “Presence” services as well as instant messaging capability to these subscribers. Followap’s product line was launched in 1999 is based in the United Kingdom. “Followap furthers NeuStar’s strategy by extending and complementing our current beachhead initiatives in new growth markets such as the GSM Association root DNS service, the acquisition of UltraDNS and the development of the SIP-IX service [source].”

Also in the official press release of the acquisition, the GSM Association (Global System for Mobile Communications) stated that personal instant messaging communication will enhance capabilities to over 1.2 billion mobile phone users, will generate over $60 billion in revenues for telecommunication companies, and will account for over 1 trillion messages sent across mobile phones. Normally, I don’t write about the happenings of the telecommunications industry, but I felt that these numbers are staggering and this information needed to be shared.

Answers Corporation, the producer of Blufr, one of my favorite websites, has acquired FAQ Farm today for $2 million. FAQ Farm is a leading wiki website that contains user-contributed questions and answers. On the homepage, FAQ Farm boasts “118,585 FAQ Farmers are now growing 282,713 questions in 1,356 FAQs for millions of visitors.” FAQ Farm receives over 12 million pageviews per month.

“The acquisition of FAQ Farm is the next logical step forward in our mission of becoming the leading online answer-engine, whether answers come from our existing library of licensed, branded, attributable reference titles, from the web, or now from a community of experts or interested participants,” stated Bob Rosenschein, the CEO of Anwers.com. “We aim to satisfy our growing dedicated user base by expanding beyond our strength in traditional reference material to embrace the community aspect of learning.”

FAQ Farm was founded in 2002 by Chris Witten. Answers.com will have Chris continue to maintain FAQ Farm and have FAQ Farm integrate the website’s content into Answers.com while adding Answers.com content to FAQ Farm.

“FAQ Farm will complement our encyclo diction almanac apedia of nearly four million topics by allowing users to ask questions or look up related answers on a specific Answers topic,” Rosenschein, “An interactive relationship can tap into the wisdom of many people and enable them to become part of something bigger.”

[Article Source: PaidContent]

America Online has acquired The Relegence Corporation, a financial services news engine that provides real-time intelligence to their users. The financial terms of the deal was not provided but PaidContent discusses how a couple of other publication companies have disclosed the acquisition amount between $50-$60 million.

The Relegence Corporation is based in New York and has 60 employees with offices in Tel Aviv and London. The Relegence Corporation will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL and will maintain normal operations. The company was founded in 1999 and “simultaneously monitors, indexes, and filters more than 20,000 unique, global sources of live content streams – such as local and international newswires, print media, television and cable networks, regulatory feeds, corporate and information web sites, internet bulletin boards – and deliver to a user’s desktop only the information which is relevant to his or her individual search criteria [source].”

The Relegence Corporation is known for their FirstTrack product which provides customized information for financial professionals such as upcoming IPOs, securities updates, and other information. This information is collected and reported in real-time.

The Relegence Corporation is America Online’s fifth acquisition in 2006. Other companies bought by AOL this year are Userplane, GameDaily, Lightningcast Inc. and Truveo Inc. “This acquisition validates the strategy we have pursued thus far: to make the real-time delivery of content to end-users a mission-critical and transforming part of their daily lives,” stated Steve Fadem, the CEO of Relegence. “We are tremendously excited about the opportunity to work with the great team at AOL to further leverage our core strengths of talent and technology in the financial services industry and across AOL’s vast network of properties and audiences.”

[Source: The Relegence Corporation press release and PaidContent]