Berlin, Germany based Plazes, a location based social network (and one of the first startups we ever wrote about here on TechCrunch, back in 2005), has been acquired by Finland-based Nokia, the companies are announcing today. The price is not being disclosed.
We most recently wrote about Plazes new iPhone application in May 2008, which will take advantage of the cutting edge location technologies available on the phone (cell triangulation and GPS). The company has raised a total of €3.7 million in venture financing over two round, although the last round was closed in February 2007.
This is the second “mobile social network” in Europe to be acquired in as many months - Danish startup ZYB was acquired by Vodafone in May for €31.5 million.
Co-founder Felix Petersen told me in a hastily scheduled phone call that the company will maintain its Berlin office and all thirteen employees. The Plazes product will become Nokia’s Services & Software unit.
In 2006 Nokia acquired Berlin based Gate5 for a rumored $250 million and turned the product into Nokia Maps, which is deployed in 300 markets. Petersen says the success of that acquisition gave Plazes a lot of comfort in working with Nokia.
As a funny aside, a year ago Petersen was busted by his own product as he avoided one conference to attend another.
Update: by Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK: My industry sources are telling me that this was a smart acquisition for Nokia, which needed to have a consumer based offering outside the rigid maps infrastructure they have, since the purchase last year of Navteq.
There is also a local story here. The Plazes office is in Berlin, physically close to the Gate 5 people, and we know from good authority that Gate 5 people are highly respected on the Berlin scene. It’s therefore likely that they had a lot to do with the acquisition thinking inside Nokia as they know the guys from Plazes.
From what we know about Nokia, the purchase of Plazes fits in with their strategy in terms of context and location and what to do with it. Put together the Ad system they have, and they control a strong section of the mobile ecosystem from ad generation, delivery through branded channels, with good profile information about the user, especially since most new handsets from Nokia now have GPS built in.
Tip of the iceberg. Many acquisitions coming in this space.
congrats to plazes. i am truly happy for them since they over a simply great service.
Plazes acquired by Nokia congrats!
ps. how much was it?
Wow. I always thought Plazes was really cool because it didn’t buy in to the whole ‘mobile’ stuff but worked flawlessly by just having a laptop and a small program running. (We recently created a new client for it with a couple of friends, see http://klinkr.net) No more action required. Funny to see they get bought by a mobile company now.
Who else should have bought them? But hey, I’m happy for the guys that they managed to sell it even though it never gained traction.
how come that my video comment is still awaiting moderation>?
it’s here loic
hey guys. congrats!
Nokia has bought a slew of social networking and media services over the last year of so, including Twango, Enpocket, Loudeye and then its big buy of mapping company Navteq.
Find1234.com
Congrats Felix!
An interview with Felix Petersen from the FOWA in London last year
http://uk.intruders.tv/FOWA-Lo....._a225.html
Great news for Plazes, Felix, Til and the rest of the guys.
Nokia is getting extremely aggressive with their acquisition strategy, especially in the mobile LBS space, so I’d expect to see many more in the coming months.
Just like to echo some of the other comments: congratulations to the guys at Plazes, and I am sure they will gain further value from their relationship with Nokia.
Big congrats from Oranienstrasse to Oranienburgerstrasse, that´s great guys! Good move for Nokia on the maps-strategy, I wonder whether Nokia shares plazes´new b2b approach over the original b2c one.
Would love to hear more as well!
Nokia goes plazes! Am quite impressed with their acquisition + most importantly, execution strategy.
Hi there, concrats to the plazes team! looking forward to cool output… and hey - take care of my plazes-places! that was quite a lot of work…
Mmm..it’s interesting, above all how much. And..why isnt the same for Funambol?
Congrats to the Plazes team.
Congrats to Plazes!
And nice to read on their blog “And yes, we will even release that iPhone Plazer”
Smart move by Nokia.
Congrats guys!
Congrats to the Plazes team, but the vertical-structure of this industry is starting to worry me. Hardware vendors and carriers running digital content services? Sounds inviting of murky conflicts of interests and players using service incompatibility as a competitive play.
Strange, Nokia breaks hearts in Bochum by closing facilities that actually turned a profit consistently; then move right back into Germany in Berling with this acquisition.
Congrats to Felix and Stefan!!
Congrats to Jeanny who works so hard for places
someone said Nokia bought GATE-5 for 250 million and created nokia maps.
i thought that was the 8.1 billion dollar navteg deal. where is nokias anchor domain on the internet. i hope they dont plan on taking plazes domain name mainstream. plazes, places, plasays, playsays………….it takes some getting used too. as long as i can remember Plazes rhymes with Blazes ill find the site. nokia would dominate vertical location based mobile and internet services if they owned a premium strategic vertical location based domain name network. Phones are not phones anymore. They are Locators! He who owns the greatest Strategic Locator Channel Network wins this location game online and mobile. CommentLocator.com
technologyhttp://vator.tv/pitch/show/MyLocatorcom?from_my_pitches=true
Nokia and Google continue to push the market towards location-relevance. With Plazes, Nokia extends their reach beyond the mobile phone to the laptop.
It will be interesting to watch Nokia, who is in a very unique position to push out the content creation tools (handsets with GPS, cameras, text and audio capture) for what will become the GeoWeb of location-relevant content created and shared by users.
Great purchase for Nokia!
Christoph Maire, one of the founders of Gate5 was a board member / advisor at Plazes. Here’s his biography: http://www.whartonzurich07.com/bio-s-maire.html
And an interview with eHub. http://www.emilychang.com/go/e.....ew/plazes/
I think the Gate5 acquisition had more than a little to do with this one.
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