Tag Archives: M&A

BitTorrent Has Acquired µTorrent

Posted on December 7, 2006 by Amit Chowdhry

Bittorrent utorrent logo
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.

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NeuStar Has Acquired UK-based Mobile IM Service Provider, Followap Inc. for $139 Mill

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Amit Chowdhry

Neustar LogoFollowap Logo
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.

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Answers.com Acquires Wiki Company, FAQ Farm For $2 Million

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Amit Chowdhry

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FAQFarm Logo
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]

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AOL Acquires The Relegence Corporation, A Real-Time Financial Services News Engine

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Amit Chowdhry

AOL Logorelegence logo
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]

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Web2 Corp Now Owns ByIndia.com

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Amit Chowdhry

Web2Corp Logo ByIndia Logo
In a slightly unexpected move, Web2Corp (NASDAQ: WBTO) has acquired ByIndia.com, a new website that boasts a YouTube-flavored design for video search, a similar MySpace interface for social networking, and an eBay-style auction page. However, ByIndia appears to be tailored for Indians as the primary demographic. Web2Corp took interest in ByIndia because they believe that it is to India as what Baidu.com is to China. Web2Corp also believes that this website has more potential than Guruji.com.

“We believe we are in early with a great product. India is a massive market that is gaining economic footing and ByIndia.com is the best product available for this audience. We plan to improve upon it. We see a Baidu-like opportunity to create the definitive community for this vast population,” stated William Mobley, Chairman and CEO of Web2 Corp. On the homepage for Web2 Corp, ByIndia is the featured product and when speaking of ByIndia, the page states “India is projected to eclipse China as the most populous country on the planet. Its economy is projected to be the third largest with the US and China in the next 15 years. We aim to dominate the growing market today.”

ByIndia.com isn’t Web2 Corp’s only major product. Here’s a list of other companies that Web2Corp companies:

It is when you hear about acquisitions like these that you begin to explore the purchasing company a bit more. When I turned to the Web2Corp blog, there is a post that talks about Web2 Corp’s take on the Google-YouTube acquisition. “This week we find Google spending $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube, the aggregator of ‘Jackass’ style juvenile video clips submitted by users that step all over copyright laws. While there is talk of Google becoming the equivalent of a television network over the Internet, Web2 sees Broadcast.com-Yahoo and AOL-Time Warner all over again. What say you?”

Although I do not know the dollar amount of the purchase for ByIndia, but the concept of ByIndia is similar to YouTube. If this was Web2 Corp’s actual viewpoint on the Google-YouTube acquisition, they would have had 2nd thoughts on the ByIndia acquisition.

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