Nokia looking for love in all the wrong Plazes

My plaze or yours?

Posted in Mobile, 23rd June 2008 15:10 GMT

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Moody Finnish mobe giant Nokia has acquired Plazes, a location-based social networking service, as part of its continuing effort to work out what kind of business it wants to be in.

Plazes is a social-networking-for-the-terminally-lazy service for anyone who wants to share where they are as well as what they're doing. We covered the launch almost exactly a year ago and noted that the company had no income or revenue model; the only hope was to find a way of making money before the bubble burst. And it seems that Nokia is to be the source of that money.

We also noted that the business was crippled by the lack of a mobile client, something the acquisition should address according to the latest entry in the company blog:

"If all goes well, in the near future Plazes will be made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices."

Nokia seems pleased with the acquisition of 13 Berlin-based developers. Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia Services & Software said in a statement: "In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."

The Finnish giant isn't saying how much it's paying for Plazes, but hopefully it's less than the cost of recruiting 13 developers, otherwise it's hard to see where the value lies. ®

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