Three acquisitions have occurred this week that I think are worth reviewing:
Jotspot acquired by Google
Travelpost acquired by Sidestep
Reddit acquired by Wired Magazine
All three continue to show the trend towards consumer driven media, and the use of consumers to define what is interesting to them on the internet. It also solidifies Google's path towards online collaboration tools.
For Jotspot the Google acquisition seems a natural fit. With enhanced wiki-type functionality Jotspot allows users to edit, add, and control any type of document online. As described by their own FAQ Jotspot is:
"a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the first application wiki company. Founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, the company is pioneering do-it-yourself application publishing to enable anyone to create, publish, and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications. "
For Sidestep, adding Travelpost, a site that "specializes in user-generated content, featuring personalized hotel ratings, travel advisory services, and personal travel blogs" allows them to leverage those features as a part of their unique travel search offering. Matching those services up to users needs for information as they plan trips is a smart match.
Lastly, Reddit is one of the most popular of the new user driven news sites, along with digg.com (which may be bought by News Corp) Reddit allows users to pick which stories are most popular.
"Reddit was founded in 2005 by college roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian upon their graduation from the University of Virginia. The service aggregates news stories submitted by users and filters those submissions based on user votes."
All three of these acquisitions continue to solidify the trend of user driven content, and by matching up that content with e-commerce or advertising capabilities you create unique opportunities to commercialize this new trend.
I look forward to seeing how these turn out.
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