Micro blog and social network
service Twitter is in talks to buy Bangalore based startup ZipDial. The deal is
said to be closed to $30 Million- $40 Million. ZipDial offers a unique
marketing solution where consumers can give missed calls to a number to engage
with an advertising brand. If the deal works out, ZipDial would be Twitter’s
first acquisition in India.
The basic functionality of this
startup revolves around people who call numbers, but hang up before the call is
answered. This simple alert then becomes the basic for a number of other,
commercial actions, and analytics to track everything. This proves beneficial
to Twitter, who can try to engage with users who do not log into Twitter.
ZipDial founded by Valarie Wagoner, Amiya Pathak, and Sanjay Swamy in 2010, has
been working with Twitter for
a while.
In past, it entered into a
partnership with Twitter India to allow those without the Internet or
smartphone to follow superstars by giving a missed call to a particular number.
User could later engage with the actor by “tweeting” through SMS. It offers a
service for users to dial/hang up on a number to activate receiving a tweet
stream from a specific Twitter account. Last year, Facebook also announced the
use of missed calls for generating leads from their ads for customers. The
entire service was run and design by ZipDial.
It could be data play for Twitter,
as mobile advertising becomes a big revenue earner for the company. ZipDial
brings in user preferences for brands in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where
smartphones are yet to make an entry. Earlier Twitter had acquired mobile
advertising startup Namo Media last year. The combined platform will improve
the social media power’s ability to deliver ‘native ads’ promotional material
that blends into mobile apps and mobile websites.
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