Verizon to sell Tumblr to WordPress parent firm

Verizon has agreed to sell its blogging platform Tumblr to the parent company of online publishing tool WordPress. Tumblr will act as a complementary site to WordPress after the acquisition.

Automattic Inc, the parent company of WordPress, will buy Tumblr and take on its 200 staff members for an undisclosed amount. Verizon, the current owner of Tumblr, had been searching a buyer for the social media platform since earlier this year.

Tumblr was once a hugely influential force in the blogging and social media sphere, but it becomes less so under Yahoo and then Verizon’s ownership. Meanwhile, platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube moved to fill the void and become much larger cultural forces as a result. Still, Tumblr does have a very active and dedicated community.

Verizon is in the process of revamping its media group, which struggled to meet revenue targets in recent years. The business, home to legacy Yahoo and AOL web properties such as HuffPost, TechCrunch, feminist media brand Makers and celebrity-interview site Build, is increasingly focused on subscription and original content.

China firm buys Media.net

A group of Chinese investors has acquired ad-tech startup Media.net for about $900 Million in cash with plans to eventually sell the company to an obscure telecommunications firm whose shares have been suspended from trading since last year.

Media.net, which is based in Dubai and New York, is touting this as the third largest ad-tech acquisition in history. The company provides the technology powering contextual ads offered by Yahoo and Microsoft Bing search Engine. The system is similar to one offered by Google, choosing which ads to show based on the content of the web page they appear on.

Media.net generated $232 million in revenue last year, more than half of which came from mobile visitors. The US accounts for 90 percent of Media.net revenue, but the company is hoping to make a big push into China after the deal. The consortium buying Media.net is led by Zhang, the chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology. His telecom firm has been moving aggressively the transition through an acquisition. 

Randstad to buy Monster

Recruitment Company Randstad Holding NV will acquire Monster Worldwide Inc. for $429 Million in a bid to widen the portfolio of Human Resource services it offers. The deal value is a significant comedown from the $7.5 Billion valuation the company demanded in 2006 and marks the acquisition of yet another icon of the first internet boom.

Yahoo’s core business was recently bought by Verizon for $4.83 Billion. Monster will retail its brand and work as an independent entity. Randstad will buy all of the outstanding shares of Monster for $3.40 per share in cash. Monster recently acquired Jobr, Japanese firm Recruit Holdings, though Indeed.com acquired Simply Hired.

It is also a reflection of the changes sweeping through the HR services business where customers are looking for integration much in the same way they do in IT services. The Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm with operations in 39 countries said Monster will continue to operate as an independent entity and will continue to operate under the Monster Brand. Monster has 3700 employees in the 40 countries that it is present in.

Companies like Monster have been hit by multitude of factors in recent times such as the economic slowdown around the world has had an impact on job sites like Monster as companies are making fewer hires. This coupled with professional networking sites and the rise of social media hiring by companies has meant that fewer people take to job sites.

Verizon buys Yahoo

After a month long bidding process and many layoffs, Yahoo has finally found a buyer. Verizon (which owns AOL, which owns TechCrunch) is officially acquiring Yahoo core business for $4.83 Billion in cash, which includes Yahoo advertising, content, search and mobile activities.

The purchase will boost Verizon AOL Internet business, which it bought last year for $4.4 Billion as it gains access to Yahoo’s ad technology tools, BrightRoll and Flurry and search, mail and messenger assets. Verizon, the No 1 U.S. wireless operator, has in recent years looked to mobile video and advertising for new sources of revenue in an over saturated wireless market. It has also scaled back on its Fios TV and internet service.

Verizon could combine data from AOL and Yahoo users in addition to its more than 100 Million wireless customers to create data to help advertisers specifically target users based on online behavior and preferences. Yahoo will continue as an independent company until the deal receives shareholder and regulatory.

The sale doesn’t include Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo convertible notes, certain minority investments or Yahoo non-core patents. Verizon prevailed over rival bidders for Yahoo, including AT&T Inc. and private equity firm TPG Capital Management LP.

Yahoo to acquire Polyvore

Yahoo Chief executive officer Marissa Mayer is pushing to add more news, entertainment and shopping information to the web portal in order to draw a bigger audience and sell advertising. Yahoo Inc. is buying shopping service Polyvore Inc., seeking to improve its online fashion content and boost shopping related advertising.

Polyvore, which combines social and e-commerce, tools for apparel and accessories, will initially be integrated into Yahoo’s Magazines that focus on beauty and style. Polyvore lets users put together themed collections of items, like those seen in fashion magazines. People can browse through the collections and then buy the items. Polyvore will add more than 350 retailers to Yahoo’s advertising platform.

Polyvore backers include Goldman Sachs, DAG Ventures, and Benchmark Capital. The company had raised $22 Million. Earlier this year, Yahoo unveiled new financial metric tracking revenue in its four key areas of growth: mobile, video, native, and social, or MaVeNS. The idea was to focus investors’ attention on the areas of the company that are growing while diverting their focus from its shrinking desktop display and search ads.

Binatone acquire Gecko Maker Connovate

Binatone communications Group is a Hong Kong based consumer electronics and Personal Care Products Company. Connovate Technologies is a Bangalore based startup company and the maker of Gecko device. Gecko is a Bluetooth device. Recently, Binatone has acquired Connovate Technology for an undisclosed amount.

After this deal, Connovate will merge with Binatone subsidiary Hubble connected and will get access to the 1500 stores in United States and 1000 in Europe that Binatone has a presence in. Gecko will be bundled with home, pet, and baby monitoring solutions that Binatone sells under Motorola brand. Connovate becomes the first Indian Startup to have an exit in the inter of things domain, a technology that represents a truly connected world where all devices talk to one another.

Last year, in November Connovate had raised $135,410 through the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo. At the time, it had also received pre-orders for 7500 devices, mostly from US, UK, and Germany, including 500 from India. Gecko allows people to control and spot various objects around them using a smartphone. Besides tracking, the device can also be used to trigger a camera, change music using gestures, motion detection, and smart leash.

Connovate other product is Weight Smart, which is quite similar to FItbit Aria except that it uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. The device comes with its own custom app using which a person can log weight and even connected to Run Keeper to create some actionable information from it. Gecko is a coin-size, square shaped device that connects with the smartphone via Bluetooth and allows users to control multiple things such as household items and electronic appliances through the smartphone.

Foreign companies are looking for acquiring startups in India to grow their business. Yahoo had acquired Bookpad a US based startup with operation in Bangalore. Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs Pvt. Ltd. in January. Google acquired Impermium, and Naspers Ltd. acquired online bus ticketing company RedBus in 2013.

Yahoo buys Startup Bookpad

Acquisition of Indian software product startups by Facebook, Google, and Yahoo over recent months is the tipping points for Indian Entrepreneurs. Bangalore based Bookpad become the first Indian Tech Startup to be bought by Yahoo. The US Internet giant who is in line to reap about $9.5 Billion from Alibaba IPO has bought the firm in a deal worth around Rs 50cr. Yahoo has so far bought 100 companies.

Bookpad is competing with large companies like Google and Crocodoc in document viewing. It allows users to create and edit files from within their apps. It supports all popular documents formats and works on desktops as well as mobile devices. It runs on HTML 5. With this acquisition, we can expect Yahoo to bring Google Docs like features in its Yahoo Mail service so that users can edit and share documents. This means when you receive documents in the mail, you can open, edit, save documents on the cloud.

Yahoo bought seventeen companies after Marissa Mayer took over as CEO. Bookpad was originally named as Docspad, where users can create spreadsheets, slideshows, from the web and save them on cloud or in their mail. In January, Facebook also acquired Bangalore based Little Eye Labs. It became the first Indian Firm to be acquired by Facebook. According to some news, Walmart, Target, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, and Goldman Sachs are among also looking for suitable matches.

Several global bodies are engaging with industry bodies like Nasscom and iSpirt to reach the right startups. According to a report, Google senior Vice President Sundar Pichai attended a roundtable organised by Nasscom, where he might with eight startups companies of his interest. Nasscom is also looking to organize the same roundtable for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is set to visit India this month. A year before, US companies were not looking towards Indian companies but now most of them are looking towards Indian start-ups to grow their business.