acquisition

Instead of exuberant rejoicing over the announcement of Facebook's mega-acquisition of Instagram yesterday, there's been a lot of woe-is-me chatter among the photo app's users. One of the reasons may be because the two social networks cater to different groups of people.

Instagram's users, on the whole, are quite a bit younger than Facebook's, according to a study done by consumer behavior research group Experian Hitwise.

"The audience for Instagram is relatively young, with over half of the visitors to the Instagram website are under the age of 35," research director at Hitwise … Read more

With the announcement of Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, some Instagram users are worried about information being passed on to the larger social network.

When you delete your account with Instagram, your photos, friendships, comments, and everything you've done with the service will be deleted. Before you pull the trigger, you can save your Instagram shots by using Instaport, an online app that lets you download your images or move them to other social networks. Simply log in to your account, give permission to Instaport to access your files, then start the download.

Now that you have your photos … Read more

Zynga's $200 million purchase of Draw Something makers OMGPOP has been heralded as a wild success for the studio, but one former employee who did not join Zynga says the social-gaming giant asked for "too much."

Over at Gamasutra, former OMGPOP employee Shay Pierce has penned a piece spelling out why he did not sign up to work for Zynga following the company's acquisition last week. One side of it was romance, while the other was a difference in ideology, he said.

On the romantic side, Pierce noted that joining Zynga would create a conflict of … Read more

Two of the largest accommodation booking sites used in the U.K. have teamed up for this summer's Olympic Games.

Airbnb--an online marketplace where travelers find and book places rented out by homeowners, renters, and landlords--announced today that it had acquired its largest U.K. competitor--Crashpadder. Rather than sleeping in hotels or couch surfing, travelers can short-term lease apartments, houses, condos, and even castles through these sites.

U.S.-based Airbnb launched in 2008 and has since grown to have an accommodation database that serves more than 19,000 cities in 192 countries and has booked more … Read more

Monotype Imaging acquired the font business of rival Bitstream for about $50 million in cash, a move that gives it greater clout in the world of digital typography.

Through the acquisition, announced yesterday, Monotype Imaging gets Bitstream's typeface library, its MyFont site for browsing 89,000 fonts and licensing them for use on Web sites, the WhatTheFont service for identifying typefaces, its Font Fusion and Panorama software for font rendering and layout, and 10 patents. It's also hiring 50 Bitstream employees and taking over its research and development site in India.

The move gives Monotype Imaging more heft … Read more

Rumor has it that game maker Zynga is in the running to buy the company OMGPOP, which makes the newest chart-topping game Draw Something.

If the acquisition goes through, it will be Zynga's biggest buyout to date, according the tech news site TechCrunch, which spoke to sources with direct knowledge of discussions between the two companies.

"Given that OMGPOP has raised around $17 million to date," TechCrunch reporter Kim-Mai Cutler wrote in an article speculating about the acquisition. "I'd expect the price for this deal to be in the $150 [million] to $250 million range.&… Read more

Cisco Systems has signed a $5 billion deal to buy set-top box software developer NDS, the companies said today.

NDS, based in the U.K., sells its software platform along with a combined service platform to video service providers. The products allow video providers to deliver a service that easily lets people view, search, and navigate video content at anytime from anywhere.

Cisco plans to use NDS software and services to enhance development of Videoscape, its own video platform for paid TV providers. The company said the NDS acquisition should help it expand into emerging markets, such as China and … Read more

Well, this is an odd one.

Green Dot, a company that provides prepaid debit cards to consumers, has acquired mobile location-based application developer Loopt for $43.4 million, the companies announced today. The deal is an all-cash transaction, and will include Green Dot setting aside $9.8 million as a "retention pool" to ensure key Loopt employees stay put.

Though Green Dot's Loopt acquisition might not make sense at first glance, considering how different the companies are, it appears Green Dot has bought the firm for its mobile-development expertise. In a statement celebrating the acquisition, Loopt co-founder … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices will acquire server vendor SeaMicro in an attempt to make a run at Intel in the microserver market.

AMD said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a company that supplies energy-efficient microservers, for approximately $334 million.

To date, SeaMicro servers have been using Intel's Atom and Xeon processors. Future plans call for SeaMicro to build servers with AMD's Opteron chips.

"AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteron processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012. The company remains firmly committed to its traditional server … Read more