Will 2010 be the year of acquisitions in the social media world? Only 4 days into the new year and we have our first social media deal, and this one is quite interesting.
Loïc Le Meur, CEO of the social networking application player Seesmic
, has announced its acquisition of social status updater Ping.fm. This deal now positions Seesmic as the leader in social status management via their application suite on the web, desktop and mobile platforms.
Ping.fm enables social status updates across 50 social networks and will bring over 500,000 current users to Seesmic. In addition, Ping.fm co-founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough will be joining the Seesmic full time and are now shareholders in the combined company.
As Le Meur stated on Seesmic’s official blog earlier today, “Your friends are not all in one social network, but we want to help you stay in touch with them anytime and from any device. That is Seesmic’s vision and to deliver this faster, we have acquired Ping.fm. You can now update 50 social networks using Seesmic+Ping.fm from email, chat, sms, Blackberry, Android, web, Windows, OSX and much more soon.”
Not only will this deal turn Seesmic into a rather interesting player in the social media application space, but will move Seesmic closer to their traffic growth goals. As Le Meur wrote on January 1, the company has a goal of 1 million status updates a day in 2010. With the acquisition of Ping.fm, Seesmic will add roughly 200,000 updates a day to that goal. Below is Le Meur and McCullough talking about today’s deal.
As referenced in the clip, possibly the hidden gem in this deal for Seesmic is the promise to maintain and extend Ping.fm’s API and platform (roughly 100 applications currently use Ping.fm).
On its surface, this seems like a great acquisition for both teams and should position the combined entity in a strong leadership position. But will it deliver Le Meur’s vision, “The Ping.fmSeesmic to deliver faster its vision of becoming your default application to stay in touch with your friends and constantly managing your online social presence.” acquisition enables ? Only time will tell.
What do you think of Seesmic’s marriage with Ping.fm? Let me know.
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