MyFive: Important Tech Acquisitions of 2007

This article was written on January 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

my five acquisitions The new year has just begun and if 2008 is anything like 2007, we should expect a bunch of acquisitions in the tech world.  As I heard someone say recently, acquisitions should be considered the lottery for geeks, except the odds of “winning” are much higher than the actual lottery. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have been swiping up start-up after start-up faster than we can keep track! Today’s MyFive looks at some of the most significant acquisitions of 2007.

  1. Last.fm acquired by CBS
    Last.fm was acquired by CBS for $280 million back in May of 2007. CBS acquired them as part of their plan to attract a “younger crowd.”  Last.fm is a site that provides users with a personalize radio streaming experience. It has a social aspect to it which helps to draw users in.
  2. Photobucket acquired by Fox Interactive
    Photobucket was acquired by Fox Interactive Media for $250 million back in May of 2007.  This came after Photobucket and Fox owned MySpace couldn’t stop feuding.
  3. FeedBurner acquired by Google
    It’s hard to believe that Feedburner was acquired by Google in 2007 because it seemed as though it had happened long before. The price for this startup was $100 million and was official at the beginning of June. Given the popularity of FeedBurner and number of sites that use the service, we thought that the $100 million price was a little on the low side. Shortly after the acquisition came the option for all users to “Go Pro for Free.” Gotta love when Google makes an acquisition!
  4. StumbleUpon acquired by eBay
    One of the more surprising acquisitions occurred on May 30th when it was announced that eBay was acquiring StumbleUpon for $45 million. They didn’t exactly seem like a match made in heaven, but so far it’s worked out.  eBay didn’t come in and make drastic changes to the popular discovery site which meant all of the users have remained happy (read).
  5. MyBlogLog acquired by Yahoo
    The MyBlogLog acquisition was one of the very first of 2007! Yahoo came in and swiped them up for $10 million which was quite the pay-off for a site that had only been available to the public for 3-4 months. While the popularity of the service seems to have faded over the last several months, it still plays an important role in the blogosphere (read).

If you’d like to view more of the acquisitions of 2007 that happened in the tech world, this site has a great list worth checking out.

Is there an acquisition that you think we overlooked or one that you feel should be added to the list? Hit us up in the comments below…

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FeedBurner Says: Go Pro for Free!

This article was written on July 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

FeedBurner Google

FeedBurner just announced that because they were acquired by Google they are now able to offer their PRO package at no cost to all users. What kind of goodness does such a package get you? For starters you can get advanced stat tracking that lets you see who has viewed or clicked items in your feed. It also lets you see the "Reach" which is an estimate of how many subscribers interact with your feed on a daily basis.

That’s not all though, you can also get "MyBrand" without paying a dime! As long as you don’t mind playing around with the DNS entries for your site you’ll be able to create your own feed URL. Instead of having an URL that looks like http://feeds.feedburner.com/CyberNet you could have one that looks like http://feeds.cybernetnews.com/CyberNet. This has several benefits to it, with the most significant being a professional-looking feed URL.

So how do you setup the two services? Here’s what you have to do:

  • You can turn on advanced stats by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the "Item Views" checkbox to activate these PRO features. When you’re viewing a listing of your feeds you should then see a "PRO" label next to the feeds you have upgraded.
    FeedBurner Pro
  • To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the "My Account" link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click "MyBrand". I had to email them to setup the MyBrand, and haven’t heard back from them yet. I’m not sure why an email is required, but I’ll play along.

I have a feeling that this will just be the beginning. It is only natural that Google will begin working to combine the FeedBurner statistics with Google Analytics. This would give a central location to monitor both your site and feed stats, and I don’t think there is any denying that this will happen.

FeedBurner Homepage

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