m&a

A report Monday on TechCrunch suggests that, complementing its purchase last week of social-app manufacturer Slide, Google has made another social-networking buy: a virtual-currency software company called Jambool. The start-up manufactures a product called Social Gold, which lets other sites build virtual-currency infrastructures.

A smaller purchase than Slide, TechCrunch put the price tag at about $70 million. Representatives from Jambool were not immediately available for comment.

Jambool's Social Gold was one of a number of virtual-currency start-ups that rose in the time in between the launch of Facebook's developer platform and its unveiling of its own transaction system, Facebook Credits. … Read more

Google confirmed in a blog post on Friday that it has acquired Slide, a social-media company that was founded by PayPal veteran Max Levchin and had built some of the earliest breakout hits on the Facebook platform. Levchin and the Slide employees will be transitioning over to Google.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but when word of the acquisition broke earlier this week, a price tag of about $182 million was floated around. Slide had raised a total of $78 million in venture capital over the years from firms like the Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and T. Rowe … Read more

TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy reported Wednesday that Slide, which went from photo-sharing service to sheep-throwing Facebook app manufacturer to ad network to second-tier player in the social-gaming craze, has been sold to Google for $182 million and that the deal will be announced Friday.

If true, that's a lot less than the $500 million valuation that was getting touted a few years ago when Slide was one of the Web 2.0 heyday's darlings. That valuation came about when Slide raised a $50 million funding round in January 2008.

Lacy also wrote that this is only the first … Read more

Rumors that The Walt Disney Company would acquire social-gaming conglomerate Playdom have turned out to be true: Disney issued a statement on Tuesday, after the market closed, announcing its intent to acquire Playdom for $563.2 million, plus potential earnouts of up to $200 million.

"We see strong growth potential in bringing together Playdom's talented team and capabilities with our great creative properties, people, and world-renowned brands like Disney, ABC, ESPN, and Marvel," President and CEO Robert Iger said in the statement.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Playdom is the manufacturer of popular social games such as … Read more

Facebook has acquired a travel recommendation start-up called NextStop--but as has been the pattern with the massive social network's history of small purchases, it will be shutting the NextStop product down. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We'll be joining Facebook and...Facebook has bought most of our assets," a message on NextStop's home page read, adding that NextStop will be shutting down on September 1 and that current members are being offered a number of tools for exporting their travel guides. "In the next few weeks we will be releasing the … Read more

eBay announced Wednesday that it has purchased a start-up called RedLaser, an iPhone application that scans product bar codes for price comparison and product search purposes, as well as "related technologies" from RedLaser parent company Occipital. As part of the acquisition, the RedLaser app--which has been downloaded by more than 2 million iPhone users--has transitioned from paid to free in Apple's App Store.

A price wasn't disclosed.

Though RedLaser's app will remain intact, the technology behind it will be integrated into numerous eBay products so that a prospective buyer can scan a bar code and … Read more

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong may finally have made good on his promise to figure out what to do with Bebo, the company's pricey digital albatross, by the end of the spring.

Mashable reported on Wednesday morning that Bebo had been sold; The Wall Street Journal followed up later in the day by saying that the deal is "close" but not complete and that the buyer is Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund based in Studio City, Calif. An AOL representative did not respond to a request for comment; a price isn't yet clear, but the Journal … Read more

Twitter announced Thursday that it has acquired Smallthought Systems, a data company that it has worked with in the past. Smallthought has manufactured a product called Dabble DB that Twitter had used internally, and a newer one called Trendly that parses Google Analytics data.

A price wasn't disclosed.

"They have joined our analytics team and will focus on integrating ideas from Trendly into our current tools and building innovative real-time products for our future commercial partners," the announcement blog post written by Twitter's Kevin Weil read.

That last part is crucial. Though Twitter's much-touted business … Read more

NEW YORK--AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wasn't yet at the company when it paid $850 million for social network Bebo two years ago, a purchase that's now considered to be one of the biggest tech industry M&A blunders of the past decade. On Tuesday, onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Armstrong said, "I don't know whether or not I would have bought Bebo. Looking backward, the answer's no, but in that time period with what was going on, maybe."

Indeed, at the time, would-be Facebook rival Bebo was extremely popular with teenagers in … Read more