The latest from TechCrunch
- Fantasy Foursquare Turns Into Real World Challenge: Showdown At The Foursquare Corral
- The Ugliest Girl At The Dance: How Yahoo Destroyed Yelp's Google Acquisition
- Mobclix Acquired By Mobile Marketing Company Velti
| Fantasy Foursquare Turns Into Real World Challenge: Showdown At The Foursquare Corral | Top |
| Our frequent readers may be aware of my Fantasy Foursquare fetish – I like to pretend to be placed I’m not because it gives me a small but measurable uptick in happiness. A break, if you will, from the tediousness of my everyday life behind a computer screen. I used to just scroll through friends and find interesting places to check in: I've had a very full schedule recently. Last Sunday I was in Amsterdam. On Monday I was "on a boat" off the coast of Texas and then zipped over to Dubai to check out the Ritz-Carlton hotel. By Wednesday I was in New York visiting the Foursquare offices. I spent the rest of the week in Waikiki, at NASA, in Monaco and, finally, at Pixar's studios in California. I really did visit all of these places – I can prove it because I checked in via Foursquare. That’s a lot of work, though, and Foursquare doesn’t give you any points towards mayorships when you check in that way – it knows quite clearly your actual location and doesn’t give you credit for the fake checkin. That’s when a mischievous hacker friend of mine stepped in with a small script that he wrote that will check me in to any venue at all via the Foursquare API. That means I don’t have to spend time finding friends already where I want to be, and since we’re using the API we can easily fake out the “you’re not actually there” problem. Voila – I’ve become the mayor of TechCrunch, Facebook and Twitter just like that. And the best part is I stole the mayorship of Facebook from another cheater – either my hacker is smarter, or the other guy got bored. My hacker friend has gotten himself into some trouble, though. He’s using the script too, to become mayor of smaller places. Apparently people really take this stuff seriously. Because he’s now been called out by the legitimate mayor he ousted and some other wanna be mayor as well. He just received this email (meaning these guys went to the trouble of searching for it): Those you have deposed (as Mayor and Mayor-Apparent) wish to meet you. We are here now and most evenings. When do you generally come by? No one here seems to know you, which we find most suspicious. -josh. [via iPhone] What will our Hacker Hero do? Run and hide or face his luddite enemies in person and outnumbered with nothing but his iPad to defend himself? Check back here shortly for the rest of the story. Meanwhile, my AOL HQ mayorship in NY is coming along nicely. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Ugliest Girl At The Dance: How Yahoo Destroyed Yelp's Google Acquisition | Top |
| A fascinating footnote to the failed Google acquisition of Yelp last December: a Yahoo counteroffer killed the deal, say two source with knowledge of the situation. As of December 17 Yelp was in the final stages of negotiations to sell to Google for $550 million. But just three days later the deal was off . So what happened during those three days? Yahoo came in with an offer to buy Yelp for $750 million – $200 million more than Google had offered. Yelp, via their investment bank, asked Google if they wanted to match it. Google declined, and one source says they didn’t actually believe that there actually was a competing offer. Here’s where things got interesting. The Yelp management team apparently refused to work for Yahoo and wanted to take the Google offer. The Yelp board of directors, faced with a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests all stockholders, couldn’t approve a Google deal when a competing deal was available at a $200 million higher price. So with the Yelp management team refusing to take the Yahoo offer, and the Yelp board of directors unable to accept the Google offer, everything froze and a deal never happened. The NY Times discovered many of these details on December 21 last year, but either didn’t know or didn’t name Yahoo as the competing buyer. And there are supposedly people at Google who still believe Yelp actually never had a competing offer at all and simply over negotiated. Our sources, however, swear the Yahoo offer was very real. If Yahoo did make the counter offer the whole situation is a sad reflection on the company. Even with the Yelp management team knowing that they couldn’t take the Google offer, they still walked from a huge sale just because they couldn’t stomach working at Yahoo. Foursquare apparently made a similar decision just a few months later, walking away from a $100 million or so Yahoo offer even though they knew Facebook would soon jump squarely into their market. The saddest part of the story is this – things have only gotten worse at Yahoo since then. There isn’t really a whole lot left to say. Stick in a fork in this one – it’s done. CrunchBase Information Yelp Yahoo! Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Mobclix Acquired By Mobile Marketing Company Velti | Top |
| Another one bites the dust. Mobile ad exchange Mobclix has been acquired by London-based mobile marketing agency Velti, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the transaction. We originally reported the rumors of a Mobclix deal last week. While terms of the deal have not been disclosed, we hear the size of the acquisition is north of $50 million. Mobclix's exchange allows app developers to sign up with their ad inventory and ad networks, like Millennial Media and Jumptap, bid for the spots based on age, gender, location, and other factors. The ads being served change automatically, based on which ad network is bidding the highest to reach the users of that particular app. The startup, which launched at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, also lets advertisers buy across a variety of apps based on demographic, geo-targeting, and behavioral characteristics. And Mobclix offers analytics via a recent acquisition of Heartbeat. Velti, which is a public company on the London Stock Exchange, offers a SaaS technology platform that allows agencies and brands to plan, manage, and optimize mobile advertising and marketing campaigns in real time. The company says that in 2009, 2,000 mobile campaigns were run on its platform by more than 450 brands, agencies, and mobile operators in more than 35 countries. Velti has acquired a number of companies over the past year, including mobile ad technology Media Cannon and AdInfuse. The exit is a little anticlimactic, considering that the names being bantered about with respect to Mobclix’s possible acquisition were RIM, Microsoft and other well-known technology companies. But the sell further reinforces the point that as Apple ( via Quattro ) and Google ( via AdMob ) take over mobile advertising, independent startups may not be able to compete. Acquisitions may be the best option for smaller ad networks. Rumor has it that RIM is actively looking for a mobile ad network, and sniffing around Millennial Media. Nokia may also be eying a mobile network as well. Smaller mobile ad network mSpot just got bought by business software company Marketron. I’d expect to see more market consolidation as these independent ad networks continue to get snapped up. After all, mobile advertising is a $1 billion market and everyone wants a piece of the pie. CrunchBase Information Mobclix Velti Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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