Tag: joe_kraus

Technology

Reddit acquired by Cond̩ Nast РAnother bubble?

Following on hotly from yesterday’s big news about Google’s purchase of JotSpot, comes news today that Reddit has been bought by Condé Nast (owners of Wired Digital, Epicurious.com and Style.com, among other properties).

Reddit had been licencing its technology and allowing people to white label it but as Richard McManus notes, this deal with Condé Nast is an outright takeover. Condé Nast, in a statement have said:

CondéNet, … plans to incorporate Reddit’s personalized news aggregation and other Web 2.0 technologies into the various online destinations maintained by CondéNet and its parent company, Condé Nast Publications.

CondéNet has already used Reddit technology to launch Lipstick.com, a beta site that aggregates links to celebrity gossip news stories.

“Our aim is to grow our internet position through acquisitions and innovative partnerships,” said Steve Newhouse, chairman of the Advance.net web division of Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast.

In case you are thinking that all these acquisitions means another bubble is happening, check out Joe Kraus’ post on the differences between launching a successful site years ago and today. The key point is:

Excite.com took $3,000,000 to get from idea to launch. JotSpot took $100,000.

If sites are being built for $100,000, there’s far less to lose than there was in 2,000.

Search Engines, Technology, Web 2.0

Collaborative software gets hotter!

A lot has already been written about Jotspot’s announcement that they were acquired by Google yesterday – congratulations to Joe Kraus and the team.

JotSpot is a wiki application with builtin functions for adding calendars, spreadsheets, blogs, photos, etc.

JotSpot wiki interface

This was a predictable enough move on Google’s part as they had no wiki software in their arsenal of Live web applications.

This acquisition by Google gives Google access to wiki software for its enterprise play. The list of Google’s applications in this space is becoming unassailable and their acquisitions strategy is extremely smart – they are buying proven applications with intact and enthusiastic customers already in place.

Interestingly, I see Jeff Nolan and Zoli Erdos are pointing out that JotSpot’s two main competitors, SocialText and Atlassian, are offering free migration for JotSpot customers to their respective platforms!

This acquisition only goes to further prove that collaborative software is here to stay.

I loved Dan Farber’s throwaway:

I doubt that JotSpot will be renamed Gspot