acquisitions

Social network hi5 has announced that they are acquiring PixVerse. Founder Charles Ying describes PixVerse as, PixVerse is a next generation virtual world company". PixVerse has been part of the hi5 OpenSocial implementation since the beginning and was an early adopter of the Google App Engine Web platform. PixVerse was backed by Venrock. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

We will see more of these application acquisitions as the various application platforms grow. Check out hi5's OpenSocial updates from earlier this month.

Here's an video with Ying explaining what Pixverse is, how it works and their usage of OpenSocial:

Zurich and Berlin-based location sharing tool Plazes has been acquired by Nokia. Plazes has 13 employees and the deal is expected to close in the 3rd quarter. After closing, Plazes will become part of Nokia's Services & Software unit. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Plazes notes, "in the near future plazes will be made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices." One of my close friends worked with Plazes for a while and during a trip to Berlin in 2006, everywhere we went I heard, "we must enter this location on Plazes". I never found the service that beneficial and overall I found the buzz slowly dying over the past 18 months. It seems like Dopplr has taken over the buzz from Plazes.

Brady from O'Reilly Radar says that Plazes will be used to provide Nokia with a social mapping application for its new portal, Ovi. More details on the acquisition on the Plazes blog.

Last year Nokia acquired file sharing service Twango and has been pushing mobile advertising recently.

Glam Media has announced the acquisition of UK-based Monetise today. Monetise is an online media sales company founded three years ago. Monetise currently represents companies including: Flixster.com, TVGuide.co.uk, and ARTISTdirect.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The WSJ has more details on the acquisition which include a note that the company expects to bring in $25 million to $45 million of U.K.-based ad revenue next year. Overall, Glam expects $100 million in revenue in 2008, growing to $250 million to $350 million next year.

Back in February, Glam Media launched Glam International to focus on markets outside the U.S. Today's acquisition fits nicely with their plan.

Russian leader in search Yandex has announced plans to acquire SMIlink, a provider of traffic services. Yakov over at Quintura has the details on the acquisition. Note that SMIlink's traffic services are not Web traffic-based but rather actual traffic out in the streets of Russia.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. SMIlink has a staff of about 70.

Check out our in-depth interview with Yandex CTO Ilya Segalovich. Yandex was also rated one of the top 10 Web sites in Russia by GOAL.

NY-based Collective Media is announcing their acquisition of Personifi today. The companies had been working together since October 2007. Personifi will continue to operate as a separate business unit under Collective Media. Personifi provides targeting solutions to web publishers, ad networks and mobile providers.

The acquisition makes sense as Collective Media is an ad network and targeting is critical to draw increased rates which keep publishers happy.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but our sources say that the deal was a combination of cash and stock in the low tens of millions of dollars. Collective Media raised an undisclosed round of funding late last year.

Kristen wonders why Collective Media hasn't purchased the domain collectivemedia.com which apparently is a spam site.

Web analytics service comScore is announcing their acquisition of mobile analytics provider M:Metrics. The transaction involves a cash payment of $44.3 million and the issuance of approximately 50,000 options to purchase shares of comScore common stock to certain M:Metrics unvested option holders. As mobile grows here in the U.S., the ability to measure will become more critical - especially for sites that monetize their mobile traffic.

M:Metrics describes their core mobile analytics services as:

MobiLensTM, a syndicated monthly online survey that captures overall mobile phone usage, including device information, data usage, media consumption and demographic characteristics of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users. MobiLens is available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

MeterDirectTM, the industry’s first on-device meter that passively measures the mobile Internet behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists. The M:Metrics metering technology is compatible with more than 280 device models. MeterDirect is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

M:AdTM, the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising that continuously monitors clickable display advertising from a broad representative set of mobile Web destinations to reveal leading advertisers across a variety of market segments. M:Ad is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

More details on the acquisition on Silicon Alley Insider and Techcrunch.

Comment reputation service SezWho is announcing the acquisition of semantic intelligence provider Tejit today. I spoke with SezWho CEO Jitendra Gupta who said that Tejit's technology will help SezWho with semantics translation. He wouldn't disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

Gupta explained that their reputation service which provides registered commenters with a score will be enhanced to provide sub-scores based on the vertical to which the person is commenting. For example, a technology person might have a very high reputation score in technology but that score shouldn't carry over to politics or entertainment.

SezWho provides an add-on to the commenting system you are currently using on your blog or forum. Unlike popular comment replacement systems Disqus and Intense Debate who completely replace the comment system on a blog or forum, SezWho sits on top of the current comment system provides a variety of additional beneftis and still carries the discovery that the other replacement systems offer. Gupta noted that many of the new replacement services are walled gardens and have high switching costs including loss of search engine optimzation and data ownership.

Gupta ended the call by stating that the acquisition of Tejit will help SezWho to become the leading and best reputation service online. Check out my interview from last year with Gupta.

Both companies are based in San Francisco and the 3-person Tejit team will become part of the larger SezWho team.

Techcrunch's Michael Arrington is reporting that technology site Ars Technica has been acquired by Wired. Arrington notes that his sources suggest the price is around $25 million. SAI also has received confirmation on the sale.

Ars will become a sub-brand under the Wired Digital brand and CondéNet will take over ad sales. Ars Technica has a very strong and loyal userbase - this is evident by their continual Digg frontpage status.

This type of acquisition makes sense from the purchaser perspective. Ars isn't run by one voice that "powers" the brand - rather Ars has multiple writers that contribute to the overall site. When I think of most of the major blogs, there is one (sometimes two) names that are behind the blog. This is why we haven't seen many acquisitions of these single-force blogs - potential suitors wonder if the blog can exist without the name behind it. We will certainly see some tech blogs acquired this year, there is money around and some of the blogs have large brand recognition.

Just hitting the wires -- CBS to acquire CNET for $1.8 billion. There's a call at 8:30AM and we will cover the call live. Ashkan called this one almost down to the exact price.

CNET shareholders would receive $11.50 a share if the deal closes. This amount represents a 45% premium to Wednesday's closing price and above any price at which the stock has traded in about two years. Shares of CNET rose 42% to $11.30 in recent premarket activity, while CBS' stock fell 3% to $24.10.

This deal would bring more technology content to the airwaves. No, I doubt we will see Rafe Needleman calling the next Giants-49ers game, but what we might see is shows like Natali DelConte's Loaded appear on any of the CBS television networks. I can see strong online-tv convergence with this deal.

Here's the release:

CBS to Become a Top Ten U.S. Internet Company with Unparalleled Content and Reach, Boasting Approximately 200 Million Monthly Unique Users Worldwide CNET Networks' CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, CNET News, UrbanBaby, BNET, CHOW and Search.com, Among Others, To Be Combined with CBS Corporation's National and Local Interactive Businesses Continue Reading »

Come inside to view our live notes from the conference call regarding CBS' plan to acquire CNET.