Today Webs.com was acquired by the Dutch printing company Vistaprint for a reported $117.5 million ($100 million in cash and $17.5 in stock). Webs.com was started in 2001 in Silver Spring, Maryland by then-college students Haroon Mokhtarzada and his brother Zeki. Previously called Freewebs, the product helps people create simple websites. The company raised $11 million in funding from…
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Early this morning, it was officially announced that Remedy Health Media, a New York-based health information company, acquired Arlington, Virginia-based startup HealthCentral, an online service that offers information, tools, and community access to both patients and caregivers alike. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is now believed to give Remedy Health Medi,…
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Twitter has acquired Whisper Systems, an Android security firm based in San Francisco. According to an announcement on Whisper Systems’ blog today, they will become part of Twitter. They stated: “We started Whisper Systems with the goal of improving security and privacy for mobile devices. Now that we’re joining Twitter, we’re looking forward to bringing our technology…
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Yesterday, the social networking platform Ning was acquired by Glam Media. This was interesting news as Ning was backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and took a boatload of funding, somewhere in the tune of close to $120 million. Ning was one of the first social platforms that offered APIs to roll out your own…
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Today Keepstream was acquired by InfoChimps, an API marketplace, for an undisclosed amount. Launched last year as part of the Austin-based Capital Factory startup accelerator, Keepstream, which we covered previously, allows you to easily curate various social media streams and save them to use later (long after Twitter and other streams may have disappeared). It comes…
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Personalized news iPad applications received more validation today as CNN acquired Vancouver-based startup Zite, a “personalized iPad magazine that gets smarter as you use it,” for over $20 million, though no official details were disclosed. Zite never took any venture capital funding and, rather than raise a round, decided to be acquired to partner with CNN….
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Group messaging was a hot topic this past March at the South by Southwest Interactive festival. Over the years the festival has become a place to find up-and-coming technology startups. And apparently, the buzz they got worked; late yesterday, GroupMe announced on their blog that they have been acquired by Skype. Terms of the agreement…
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It is extremely competitive right now between a number of venture backed startups for solid talent across the country. Groupon just announced today they have beefed up its development team by acquiring Obtiva, the largest agile Ruby on Rails development shop in Chicago. Groupon has been working with Obtiva since 2009, when Groupon had just…
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Continuing the race to secure valuable global market share, DC-based LivingSocial has announced they have acquired TicketMonster, one of the leading daily deal sites in South Korea. TicketMonster offers daily and instant deals, travel deals, and events to more than two million members in Korea and Malaysia. The company has grown rapidly from zero to…
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Today Baltimore-based email marketing service provider Blue Sky Factory announced that they were acquired by WhatCounts. Blue Sky Factory CEO Greg Cangialosi had this to say about the acquisition: “This is an exciting day for Blue Sky Factory and WhatCounts. Together WhatCounts and Blue Sky Factory are a powerhouse in the industry and now have…
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eBay acquired Zong, provider of payments through mobile carrier billing, today for a compensation of an estimated $240 million in cash. Zong uses direct connections with mobile network operators around the world to provide a secure payment solution. Zong is also a mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits and is accepted at over a thousand…
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Twitter has acquired BackType a dashboard for analytically tracking Twitter reach and audience. Backtype’s team and technology will join Twitter to develop tools for Twitter’s publisher partners. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. BackType raised just over $1 million in funding from Y Combinator, True Ventures, K9 Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Lowercase Capital, 500…
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DC-based Blackboard, the leader in online learning solutions, announced this morning that it will be acquired by an investor group led by affiliates of Providence Equity Partners in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.64 billion; stockholders will receive $45 in cash for each share of Blackboard common stock. This process began back in March…
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Earlier today we reported the sale of MySpace to Specific Media for $35 million. This was not a surprise as News Corp has been looking for an exit strategy with MySpace for awhile now. What is somewhat interesting is the new ownership and the involvement of musician Justin Timberlake. We first caught news of this…
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We have seen this coming for quite sometime. But now MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million in a sale that will be completed later today according to an early report and confirmed by a MySpace press release (shown below). MySpace was purchased by News Corp in 2005 for $580 million which…
Read MoreAccording to a release on the AT&T website, the company is acquiring T-Mobile USA looking to enhance their network capacity, output and quality in the near term for both companies’ customers. The deal is worth an estimated $39 billion in cash and stock. The breakdown is as follows: $25 billion in cash and $14 billion…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More