Updated: Another day, another acquisition. Six Apart has acquired mobile blogging software company Splash Data, that makes Splash Blog for an undisclosed amount of money. I have been able to confirm it. The news of the deal first showed up here.
I had written a column about this for Business 2.0, and had pointed out that the greatest opportunity is in helping get consumers off their cellphones and onto their websites or computers.
Nokia’s Lifeblog is one such application, but is limited to the Series 60/S60 phones. (They have updated it to Lifeblog 2.0) By acquiring Splash Data and thus Splash Blog, Six Apart can now expand their footprint to non-Nokia devices. I have used the Splash Blog software on T-Mobile MDA and Cingular 8125 Pocket PC phones, and have been pretty happy with the ease of use. It works best with a Treo. I think this will also help Six Apart make a breakthrough with the cellular phone companies, and get more mainstream users as their customers. It is one of those strategic moves, I think more companies should be thinking about.
Another company which is making mobile photo life easier is PixPulse, a tiny start-up that is growing like weeds do after a monsoon. I am sure there are more, but frankly I am not up on the latest plays in this space. As an aside, when we hosted our Next Net Roundtable last week, one thing which was clear that most Web 2.0 companies are very very desktop centric, and don’t think mobile, which in my opinion is a much larger opportunity.
Hi Malik, I have been a follower of Six Apart for 3 years. As you seem to deliver accurate and up front news, that is often on the button can you answer these questions.
Why are there barely no news updates on the website? Why does Mena no longer communicate from her corner?
Why do supposed acquisitions appear on the aquired companies site before any announcement is made at Six Apart?
And above all where is the heralded Comet project that was promised in Q4 last year. Maybe the guys and girls at Six Apart are still on Christmas break?
Six Apart are preaching openess and trasparency and behaving like a behemoth.
I’m so happy to hear the news about Splash Data because one of its founders, John Chaffee, is about the nicest guy on the planet. He showed me SplashBlog months ago, and I thought it was fantastically cool.
I note that Six Apart branding is all over the Splash Data Web site already.
(Note: Matt Maier’s links are dead in Gigacontributors.)
hey glenn,
thanks – i met with them as well, so this is indeed good news. i hope they can extend this to many different platforms.
by the way MM is not working at B2.0 anymore so his links were taken off. we shall revive them soon.
Hi Om, What’s not clear is whether Six Apart acquired all of Splash Data or only the Splash Blog part. Has the acquisition been verified by anyone at SA?
I wrote an email to someone at SA, but they’re not yet prepared to discuss details. Further, a new CEO, Morgan Slain has been identified for Splash Data with the previous CEO, John Chaffee now the Director of Mobile at SA. Also, the SA logo only appears on the Splash Blog portion of the Splash Data site.
Maybe there’s a bit more to this story?
hi mobile jones,
the deal has been for the entire company. the deal has been confirmed by highly reliable sources, and as i said, for an undisclosed amount. clearly sign – SA knows the world is all mobile.
I can’t help feeling that Six Apart should concentrate some resources on solving the problems with their existing services before acquiring new ones, like the ongoing problems with LiveJournal’s abuse team. There has been much debate on LiveJournal recently about the proposed introduction of advertisements, which a lot of long time LJ users are strongly against. If they need more revenue, maybe they should stop angering paid users by giving a team of volunteers the power to suspend them based on policies which change at whim.
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