To celebrate the news of Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, designers over at Visual.ly put together a rockin’ infographic timeline of how the photo app went from zero to a billion in 17 months of exposure.
Join us on July 31 for our Social Curation Summit in New York, where you'll learn new strategies to connect and engage with your audience using visual communities such as Pinterest, BO.LT, and Tumblr. Speakers include Scott Belsky (Behance), Shane Rahmani (Thrillist), and Elias Roman (Songza Media). Register by June 7 and save. 
Twitter has acquired Posterous, the blog-posting service that grew out of the Y Combinator program in 2008. The terms of the sale were not disclosed, but Posterous seems to have traded its staff for Twitter’s wider audience.
Klout, the service which allows Twitter users to check their influence, recently got a whole dose of funding and has made their first acquisition. They’ve acquired Blockboard, a service that allows people to easily communicate with their neighbors about anything from broken lamp posts to gossip.
Quorus, a social shopping site that facilitates better conversation between customers, merchants and customers friends, has had its entire team acquired by Amazon. We covered the service a year ago, and chatted with the CEO, and are happy to see the smart team being picked up. It’s not known whether Quorus itself will be utilized at Amazon, or whether the team will be working on something new.
In an attempt to make copyright management easier and more efficient, YouTube has acquired RightsFlow, a licensing and royalty service provider that works with labels, distributers, artists and music services, helping them to manage their music rights.
That makes five acquisitions for HootSuite. The company has already acquired What the Trend, Twapper Keeper, TwitterBar and Swift App.
The friend.ly staff will continue to work as they always has, but with the prospect of moving forward technically. The 10-person team will be working on new products at Facebook, according to a recent blog post announcing the deal. Financial affairs of the deal have not been disclosed.
It will be interesting to see how Walmart develops its social shopping network with the team for OneRiot now aboard. The largest retailer in the country is known for its great savings for shoppers. But of late, it is developing a strong online presence with recent acquisitions of online advertising companies.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Supercharging Android: Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility
The $12.5 billion purchase is framed as a vehicle to defend Android against Apple and Microsoft’s recent patent attacks against Android.
Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies
Google said that Motorola will remain a separate business that is a licensee like other manufacturers. However, you have to wonder how other Android manufacturers feel about this acquistion. This is my next collected statements which look way too cookie-cutter similar to have originated from the individual companies.
Google buying Motorola: Nokia, Samsung, and other industry players react
HTC: defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem
LG: defending Android and its partners
Samsung: defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem
Sony Ericsson: defending Android and its partners
But, what will the other Android manufacturers do now that all the major mobile platforms have a primary dance partner?
Apple – iOS
HP – webOS
Nokia – Microsoft Windows Phone (partnership)
RIM – BlackBerry OS & QNX
While Google’s Android hardware partners have lined up behind the apparent party line, there’s diversity in pundits’ opinions.
- ZDNet: Google’s $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility bet: 6 reasons why it makes sense
- Business InsiderTHE TRUTH ABOUT THE GOOGLE-MOTOROLA DEAL: It Could End Up Being A Disaster
NOTE: There are a pair oddities in Google’s official announcement.
1. It talks about Android launching in November 2007. However, the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, launched in October 2008.
[Addendum: Shawn Ingram reminded me that Android was announced, but without any hardware released, in November 2007: This is the droid you're looking for]
2. The announcement says ” we have agreed to acquire Motorola.” However, they are actually buying Motorola Mobility (MMI). The company currently referred to as “Motorola” is Motorola Solutions, Inc. (MSI).
You can read a bit more about the business aspect of this purchase in this SocialTimes item:
With 35 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute you get some professional, high quality videos and you get some shakey, amateur videos shot using mobile phones and mini video cams. Just because this shakey, amateur footage is, well…amateur and shakey, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. But it does mean that it isn’t quite as easy to watch as the professional, high quality video. That’s why YouTube has announced it’s acquisition of Green Parrot Pictures, a digital video technology company that is capable of reducing the shake and visual noise to render steadier, higher quality video.
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