Travelocity acquires Travelguru

For an undisclosed amount but the sources at VCCircle reveal that the deal is somewhere around $10-$12M range. Both the founders get 1M in their pocket. Travelguru was one of the winners at Harvard b-plan competition and was started by Ashwin Damers and Amit Taneja. More information can be found here.

Important things to note -
1. There isn't much money in online air-fare business. Most of the revenues they generate is from hotel business.
2. In India the model is still 50% online and 50% offline - Again, a holistic online model is yet to succeed in India primarily because of low penetration on computer/internet.
3. Cross selling is important in this business.

Time to see what other players Makemytrip.com, and Yatra.com are going to do. All three of these sites are funded and are pretty dominant in the market. Speculation that makemytrip is going IPO this year are making news as well.

Myspace acquires iLike

Myspace has acquired iLike for approx. $20M though the exact details of the deals weren't revealed. More information can be found at Techcrunch link here.

Random thoughts on this deal

1. iLike is an app that has been integrated with Facebook. How do you put a valuation of 20M on the app like iLike? What if Facebook discontinues iLike tmrw and replace it with something very similar.

2. As Myspace I would be wary about why Facebook hadn't acquired iLike before. From what I read somewhere iLike management's team weren't fond of Facebook's mgmt team - so this possibly could be one of the reason.

3. The two social media competitors are going to have to collaborate on the issue of iLike. I don't really see how this will work out (I haven't used iLike or any of the music app. online so I am not aware of how it works).

Finally, I think it is a positive step for Myspace. Myspace definitely can't compete with just being an only Social Medial entity. Their best bet is concentrating in music industry and I think with the acquisition of iLike they have made clear that they want to lead the Social Media Music landscape. In fact, I believe that soon each entity in Social Media will target to one segment.

Facebook - e-commerce platform
Myspace - Music
Twitter - Real time web search

The social media landscape is going to further develop itself. I think of it as a world over internet with no boundaries. Well sort of!

Facebook acquires FriendFeed

One more deal in the Silicon Valley. As the battle between MSFT, YAHOO, GOOGLE heats up, Facebook lands up a deal with Friendfeed. With Real time search making waves in the tech field and twitter leading the race, Facebook has a good opportunity to partner with Friendfeed and compete head on head with Twitter. The market space of search is indeed getting very exciting. The deal amount was of $5oM but the most interesting part of the deal is that all the senior executives at Friendfeed (apparently all the ex-googlers with real time search experience), will join Facebook. A solid gain for Facebook for $50M.

Publicis to acquire Microsoft's Razorfish

Publicis group acquired Microsoft for $530M. According to the deal, Microsoft will be paid half of the deal amount in cash and also get approx. 6.5M shares of Publicis - amounting to a roughly 3 percent stake in holding company.

According to Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis group, "the acquisition of Razorfish is another step forward in realizing our strategic vision of building a world leader in digital communications, a critically important space for our clients". He further added that 25% of company's annual revenues will come from digital communication.

- Show's the importance of digital communication going forward and perhaps one more sign that traditional media is going to take a hit.

Publicis Groupe is a French multinational and advertising company. It provides traditional advertising, media services, marketing services and specialized agencies.