Freshdesk acquires Framebench

Cloud based customer support software firm Freshdesk has acquired Pune based Framebench, an online multimedia file collaboration platform, for an undisclosed amount. This is the fourth acquisition by Freshdesk, starting from the first acquisition of live video chat firm 1CLICK.io in August 2015.

Framebench offers an online platform that enables teams to share, review and comment on videos, images, presentations and documents. With the acquisition of Framebench, support agents can interact with their customers and internal product teams by collaborating on the same file. Framebench, launched in 2013, is funded by Blume ventures and has offered its services to the US Republican Party in its election campaign.

With Framebench, the customer support agent can interact with the product team even as the customer sends a screenshot and use the visual communication platform in realtime while working on knowledge base articles, images or even tutorial videos. This would enable multiple individuals to edit, annotate and review creative files.

Launched in 2010, Freshdesk has 50,000 customers around the world, including 3M, Honda, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, the Atlantic, and Petronas. The flagship product allows organizations to support customers through email, phone, websites, mobile apps, forums and social media.

LinkedIn bought Lynda.com

Lynda.com is a privately held online education company offering thousands of video courses in software, creative, and business skills. It was founded in 1995. The company produces video tutorials taught by industry experts. Members have unlimited access to watch the videos, which are primarily educational. It has more than 500 employees worldwide, and offers instruction in German, French, and Spanish through its branded division, video2brain.

The career social network LinkedIn bought Lynda.com in a cash stock deal valued at $1.5 Million. Mission of both the companies is equally aligned. When integrated with the hundreds of Millions of members and millions of jobs on LinkedIn, Lynda.com can change the way in which people connect to opportunity. The acquisition combines 52 percent cash payout and 48 percent stock.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional network, and with more than four million members, 267k video tutorials, and 6300 courses. LinkedIn has reported revenue growth of nearly 50 percent in each of the last three quarters, helped by rapid expansion in international markets such as China. This is the largest deal for LinkedIn in 12 years. LinkedIn generated $2.2 Billion in sales last year. Lynda.com made more than $150 Million in revenue last year and has turned a profit since 1997. 

Google Acquires Odysee

Google may be soon adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service. It had acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos and videos taken on their cameras or tablets to their home computers. It also let users set up private, automatic sharing with other people, and it had an API for integrating the service with other apps.

Google might launch Photos as a standalone service, independent of Google+. Adding in options to save photos offline, and more features to better control how you share pictures, are logical additions that would give Google Photos service a more rounded offering, and help differentiate it more from other competing photo services. Others in the crowded space of online photo services include Facebook/Instagram, Yahoo Flickr, Dropbox and many more.

Odysee, which let people log in with Facebook or by creating an account, was an app created by Nimbuz, co-founded by Raghavan Menon and Shiva Javalagi. Both founders have background in Networking, Algorithms, Caching, and Embedded Software. Menon previously co-founded chip designer Ingot Systems, which was acquired by Virage Logic, later acquired by Synopsys.

Odysee keeps copies of recently accessed photos and videos online at high quality. Odysee keeps copies of photos and videos that are unlikely to access online at lower quality similar to that on Instagram or Facebook. It had its own “follower and following network” that was based around the idea of adding a small group of close family and friends who would also be on the app, with the option of sharing more pictures to “non-Odysee users” by way of URL links rather than embeds. It was build around a freemium model free for the first year, and the $5/year thereafter.