Zoomf is Acquired by Trinity Mirror

No surprise that Zoomf is being acquired. There had been rumours that the Web 2.0 property search player has been up for sale for awhile. One would guess this a good way for Trinity to get some good online talent plus this sites tech and traffic. That cat is out on the deal. From my view this makes a lot of sense – property search (real estate) online should be a key part any newspaper’s digital and future proofing strategy.

Minor League Deal – blinkx looks to buy miva

Reported over on sister blog AdViking today – blinkx has made an offer to buy Miva. The offer is $1.20 per share which is a hefty premium on the current stock price. In what is probably related news Miva’s co-founder Seb Bishop left Miva last week.

Miva, which is a combination of Findwhat (onetime 2nd tier US PPC network) and Espotting (one time 1st tier European PPC network), appears to have been on life support for a few years now. Findwhat paid a lot more than $41 Million for Espotting back in 2004. [Side note: I personally believe Espotting was one move away from being a $500 Million dollar mini-monster in Europe. I mean a smart move. But hey that's business and probably more interesting as part of short business lessons learned piece some day.]

I would guess this deal will go ahead… As an ex-insider from Espotting I can only hope this deal is good news for all the employees!

More analysis on the deal is available here on paidcontent, Screenwrek and SEW.

Update 11 Aug: I was thinking about this deal over the weekend, which I know is a bit sad. Anyway, I was trying to figure out why Blinkx would buy Miva? I am guessing they get a number of things: advertising people, a revenue stream, traffic to push Blinkx services down, tool bar & domain business which looks like the best piece of Miva and a host of advertising relationships. This last one is something a lot of online players miss, that it takes physical time to develop advertiser relationships and to build any ad network of size, this is probably the hardest part of the ad network business espacially one that covers the long tail and as well as the fat head. This also one Google’s strongest weapons. More on this meme another day.

Amazon is buying Abebooks – a no brainer

I am a big fan and regular customer of Abebooks, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Amazon annoucedlast week that they are buying them. After thinking about for about 30 seconds this seems like a no brainer – although others may question the deal – and a win-win for both companies, buyers and sellers. I agree with Screenwerk that this would have been hard to predict back before 2000.

Smart Move by The Guardian

The Guradian Media group in the UK announced last week that they are buying ContentNext, the parent company of digital business website PaidContent, as part of its US expansion. ContentNext is basically a very good blog publishing outfit.

Why is this smart? Easy. Great content. Online traffic. Digital savvy team. A platform for expansion into other markets, like the US.

There were lots of posts around the web last week about this deal and by people a lot smarter than me – so I am not going say much more tonight. Its a good move. The Guardian is one of the top newspapers groups in terms of digital strategy! Right up there with the likes of Schibsted and the Irish Times.

Where there is Smoke, Fire is FAST to Follow

It is not the best of summers so far for enterprise search player Fast Search & Transfer (FAST – now owned by Microsoft) as additional squalid (TC piece HERE – with lots of details and a translated text of a Norwegian article) and one might say ‘dirty’ details from FAST’s accounting issues continue to be reported. The Norwegian press seems to smell blood in the water and are circling like true pack of ‘hack’ jackals.

Let’s hope that somehow the company gets through this maelstrom and can capitalize on the synergies (that I pointed out earlier in the year) that they can bring to the Microsoft in the media space. Just imagine having a network of publishers with all that content, all those users, all that site search traffic and with technology provided by the ‘publisher’ friendly folks from Redmond (not the Googleplex)? There is a serious play waiting to be exploited using those content assets with MSFT tech resources that still allows the publishers to stay in control… I will call this the ‘meta network’ concept for now (need to flesh it out and post back at a later date on some details).

Microsoft buying Powerset – adding to the search arsenal

Microsoft has announced plans to buy natural language search player Powerset for a reposted $100M (FT.com). This deal will help MSFT in the search war with Google. No surprise on this deal as Powerset has some very cool technology. This SFGate piece on the company is worth a quick read.

Other Blog Posts Worth a Read – Spot Runner, etc

Well, its another week or so since my last post and April was pretty low month for both the number of posts and the quality from A Fuller View. Lets see if the Arpil drought can bring some May sprouts…

Scanning around the blog-o-sphere here are some posts that I think are worth a read:

• On Screenwrek – Spot Runner just raised more money and this round included money from UK based Dail Mai Group (which is intersting).
• Buzz Machine – his Guardian column from last week. All about an interesting wine guy’s brand and what this means in the world of social media: “Your personal brand is now completely exposed to the world, 24/7. Everyone is media now.”
• AdViking – our sister site posts about the $300M deal for Adify. Wow that’s a lot offly paper.
• On Razorshine some intersting thoughts on Firefox 3 and much needed delicious plugin.
• RWW alot of traffic on myspace US. I wonder how much of that is search driven?

What else is on my mind? Well I need to finally blog about Venice – I have some notes stuck on my mobile Windows device that I can’t seem to easily get off (I am not a fan on Windows Mobile and my Palm Treo at the moment). I am aslo thinkming about the transient nature of instant messenger platform use and churn and what this might mean for socail media. But mainly, I am thinking about how nice it is that summer has arrived in London – at least for the moment.

FAST is now a Microsoft Subsidiary

Microsoft closed its acquisition of enterprise search company FAST last Friday. This deal was originally announced back in January.

Local Matters Merging with mobilePeople

This deal – Local Matters + Mobile People – will be of interest to people in the local search and IYP space. The deal had been rumoured for months now and so no surprise to see it finally announced. The combined company should be able to provide a more comprehensive solution to new and existing customers. There are no details on the value of the deal. If anyone has any info on the deal size or wants to speculate please comment… Note: Local Matters are a fairly significant partner with FAST in terms of using the FAST search platform for as a core element of LMI’s solution. It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves once FAST is part of MSFT.

Here’s the full release from the LMI site:

March 28, 2008

For Immediate Release

Local Matters and mobilePeople Merger Provides Unique Offering to Directory Publishers

Copenhagen/London, NN March, 2008 – Local Matters, Inc., a Denver, Colorado based Media Technology Solutions provider, and mobilePeople a/s, a Copenhagen, Denmark based local mobile search and advertising provider, have entered into a Share Purchase Agreement on March 21, 2008. Under the terms of the transaction, Local Matters will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of Mobile People in exchange for a combination of cash and Local Matters stock. The combined company would provide directory publishers, media publishers and directory assistance providers with media technology solutions that connect consumers and advertisers across digital channels including the internet, wireless and voice.

There are now more than three billion global mobile users, and local search ranks among the top content categories that consumers utilize on their mobile phones. Publishers are increasingly extending into Internet and mobile to capture users and local advertisers.

Local Matters’ CEO Perry Evans said: “We chose mobilePeople because we believe they have the best technology to create a mobile distribution presence for publishers. Its expertise, its track record and its innovation cycles set them apart from the many other companies in this space. Our aim now is to be the preferred one-stop shop for directory publishers and directory assistance providers for outsourced media technology solutions online, on wireless and on voice.”

The two companies formed a business partnership in 2006 and have several joint initiatives in progress. The closing of the transaction is subject to additional closing conditions and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2008.

Google Closes DoubleClick Acquisition

After almost a year Google has finally closed the DoubleClick deal. SAI has some interesting posts on the deal here (job cuts?) and here (a bold move in display?). I doubt Google will put banners on google.com, but I can see them building out a serious display network to rival Yahoo, MSFT and AOL – they have all the pieces. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more comments… In the meantime here is a DCLK email to exisiting clients:

Dear Valued Client,

As you may have heard, Google closed the acquisition of DoubleClick today..

I wanted to personally share with you our initial plans now that our businesses can join together.

We’re very excited to be able to combine DoubleClick’s industry expertise and market leadership with Google’s technology and resources for serving our publisher clients. The combined company will offer more tools for publishers to enhance productivity and create additional revenue opportunities.

We wanted to immediately address some of the specific implications of the acquisition, so we have a few FAQs below to give you more insight into our partnership with Google and plans for the future. For now, the offerings and services will not change and you will still work with the same great DoubleClick team. As decisions about business integration and products are made we will not only keep you informed on the progress, but also solicit your feedback. Our top priority is to continue to provide you with the highest level of service.

We hope to speak with you soon regarding any questions or concerns you may have and we look forward to working with you during this exciting time!

Regards,

David Rosenblatt

1. Will you continue to support my DoubleClick products and services?

DoubleClick has built its business by providing best-in-class service to customers. We are committed to maintaining those service levels as the two companies combine. And we are committed to better addressing your needs as we combine resources and develop enhanced solutions in the future.

2. Does anything change in my ownership of my data?

Data confidentiality remains a DoubleClick and Google priority. We will fully honor our client contracts that govern the use of the data, and have no plans to change the limited use provisions set forth in those contracts.

3. What are your plans going forward?

Ad serving encompasses a set of critical technologies that will get more support and resources after close. The combined company’s goal is to build on DoubleClick’s products and services so that they scale for the future. We are committed to building a true end-to-end solution that gives publishers more efficiency, scalability and profitability. The DoubleClick and Google product teams will work closely over the next few months to build a plan for delivering next generation ad serving.

For AdSense publishers, DART tags will be introduced into the Google content network. After close, Google will begin testing DoubleClick’s ad serving products to pave the way for the acceptance of DFA tags in our content network. The testing will begin on a small scale and expand over the course of the next year. We look forward to sharing more and to working with our publisher partners to maximize the potential of the network.

Together, we will create the next generation enterprise-class ad serving and management solution for publishers.

We will work with you to generate higher yields by combining DoubleClick’s and Google’s strengths in inventory management, ad serving, and optimization