Social Networking, Acquisition | featured news

Content has become a large initiative on LinkedIn’s web property, but it hasn’t translated as well to its mobile apps. More users are shifting to mobile, and as the Pulse team was mostly focused on mobile, they can contribute to LinkedIn’s content efforts specifically on mobile platforms.

Seattle-based Atlas is a digital media measurement platform; it provides measurement, analytical and management tools for ad campaigns and marketing agencies.

Kevin Systrom's smartest move was to sell Instagram to Facebook early, before having to deliver even an iota of revenue. My prediction is that we’ll look back on Facebook's acquisition of Instagram as a bust—much in the same way we now view News Corp.’s purchase of Myspace, AOL’s purchase of Bebo, and Excite@Home’s purchase of Blue Mountain Arts.

Sun Valley and self-driving cars aside, the story of the day today is that social news site Digg has sold its remaining assets for $500K to the NYC-based tech firm Betaworks. While that number is indeed in the ballpark, we’re hearing from multiple sources that the total price of the Digg acquisition was around $16 million, including the price paid for IP by a previously unreported acquirer, LinkedIn.

Believe it or not, it's been seven years since Digg launched. To date, we've had over 350M Diggs, 28M Story Submissions and 40M Comments. We're extremely proud to have helped pioneer social voting on the web.

Microsoft agreed to buy online social network firm Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash, which will allow the software company to offer a service like Facebook's to corporate customers.

After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finally announced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technology Face.com. We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. (Update: We’re now hearing from a source familiar with the matter that the price was between $55 and $60 million, and that it was a mix of cash and stock. The exact value of the deal will be changing depending on the price of Facebook’s stock.) This is absolutely not an acqui-hire, as Facebook will be taking full advantage of the company’s technology and the advancements it’s made on mobile — perhaps to finally include mobile tagging options for photos.

Microsoft Corp is close to buying business software company Yammer Inc for more than $1 billion, according to a source familiar with the details. Microsoft's interest in Yammer, known for its social networking functions, could allow the software giant to beef up its offerings for corporations.

Facebook went public just about a month ago, and on Friday the Securities & Exchange Commission released its correspondence with the social network in the months between its initial filing and the May 18 IPO.

Google Inc. in Mountain View has agreed to buy Meebo Inc., a startup that helps online publishers make their websites more social. Meebo, founded in 2005, announced the agreement Monday on its blog.