acquisition

Twitter adds to acquisition roster with RestEngine team

Twitter has hired the team behind RestEngine, a 2.5-year-old company that focuses on e-mail marketing.

RestEngine describes itself as a "social marketing automation solution" aimed at app developers and publishers. The company serves up personalized marketing e-mails. Some of its customers include RockYou, UStream, and CrowdStar.

TechCrunch first reported news of the deal, which the outlet says was completed in late April. RestEngine alerted users about the move in a note on its Web site today: … Read more

Elpida buyout would make Micron major Apple chip supplier

Micron on Thursday confirmed that it is in discussions to acquire Japan-based Elpida, one of the largest memory chip manufacturers in the world.

"Micron Technology...today confirmed it is engaged in discussions with Elpida Memory's trustees to acquire Elpida's business," the Boise, Idaho-based chipmaker said in a statement.

Elpida was formed in 1999 when NEC and Hitachi merged their memory chip businesses. But the price volatility of the memory market eventually took its toll, and the company filed for bankruptcy in February with $5.6 billion of debt, despite having become the world's third-largest maker … Read more

Evernote acquires handwriting app Penultimate

Hot on the heels of raising a $70 million funding round, the popular note-taking service Evernote is announcing today that it has acquired Cocoa Box Design, publishers of the iPad handwriting app, Penultimate.

The Penultimate note-taking app currently has integration into Evernote: You can send pages you create in the app to a linked Evernote account. It integrates with Dropbox the same way.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin told me the app won't be changed substantially, though integration into Evernote will be made tighter. "The important thing is to not break it," Libin says. Evernote will, however, put … Read more

LinkedIn buys presentation-sharing site SlideShare

LinkedIn announced today it has agreed to acquire presentation-sharing Web site SlideShare for $118.8 million.

San Francisco-based SlideShare, which helps professionals discover people through content and vice versa, had nearly 29 million unique visitors in March, according to market analyst ComScore. Since SlideShare's founding in 2006, its users have uploaded more than 9 million presentations.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based business-networking giant is buying the San Francisco-based company in a cash and stock deal that is expected to close in the second quarter.

"Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their … Read more

Did Facebook spend $1B to keep Instagram from Twitter?

Was Facebook's acquisition of Instagram motivated by paranoia?

That is the theory behind a VentureBeat report that Mark Zuckerberg rushed the negotiation process for the photo-sharing app to keep it out of Twitter's hands. The report contends that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom first received an offer and term sheet from Twitter and then leveraged that for a $1 billion payday earlier this month from the social-networking giant.

Systrom used a pending funding round with Sequoia and Greylock to pressure Twitter to make an offer, a source tells VentureBeat. However, Instagram reportedly did not sign the offer, said to … Read more

Zuckerberg did $1 billion Instagram deal on his own

Facebook shocked the tech community with its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, but perhaps more shocking is the price the photo-sharing app's CEO originally wanted for his company: $2 billion.

During three days of quiet negotiations, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg halved Kevin Systrom's asking price -- all without involving bankers or his own board of directors, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). In fact, Zuckerberg, who controls roughly 57 percent of the company's voting rights, had pretty much closed the deal with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom before even informing the board of … Read more

Facebook's acquisition spree continues with TagTile

Facebook is amping up its mobile efforts, this time around commerce.

Facebook today bought a San Francisco-based startup called TagTile, a mobile-based customer loyalty business. Like Square, TagTile provides merchants with a free hardware device (see the white cube in the photo) for customers to tap on with their phone when they checkout. That, combined with the app, lets stores run coupon programs and offer loyalty rewards.

In a post on its site, TagTile said that Facebook is "acquiring substantially all of our assets." How much is that worth? Facebook isn't saying. But this acquisition clearly isn'… Read more

Instagram takes the title of No. 1 free app on iTunes

Instagram has terminated Draw Something's long-time reign over the No. 1 free app spot on iTunes' download charts.

"Instagram is #1 in the @AppStore for the first time ever! Thanks everyone!," Instagram announced on Twitter today.

Most likely this has something to do with Facebook's acquisition of the photo sharing app yesterday. With widespread news that the social networking behemoth laid down $1 billion for Instagram, people who weren't familiar with the app must have gotten curious.

It's been a big last few days for the 2-year-old startup. Not only did it cash in … Read more

Instagram users are young and Facebook users are old

Instead of exuberant rejoicing over the announcement of Facebook's mega-acquisition of Instagram yesterday, there's been a lot of woe-is-me chatter among the photo app's users. One of the reasons may be because the two social networks cater to different groups of people.

Instagram's users, on the whole, are quite a bit younger than Facebook's, according to a study done by consumer behavior research group Experian Hitwise.

"The audience for Instagram is relatively young, with over half of the visitors to the Instagram website are under the age of 35," research director at Hitwise … Read more