Nokia to Acquire German Social Networking Co. Plazes

June 23, 2008

Politics makes strange bedfellows and so does business. Mobile phone giant Nokia announced today that it plans to acquire German mobile social networking startup Plazes, which has plans to release an app for Apple's iPhone, a Nokia competitor.

Plazes, which employs 13 people, provides a context-aware social-activity service that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities, including why they are at a given location at a given time, whether in the past, present, or future, according to Nokia. By acquiring Plazes, the Finnish mobile phone giant said it will be able to extend its context-based service offering with social presence and time-based activity planning features. Plazes adds the elements of place and time to social networking through features that allow people to alert friends of their activity and location; review their own and others' past activities; share their experiences and make plans with friends, who are then able to respond with comments and suggestions as well as their own location information.

Nokia said it expects to close on the acquisition in the third quarter of this year; Plazes will then become a part of Nokia's Services and Software unit.

Plazes stated in its company blog today that for the time being it would be business as usual for the company. "We are not going to shut down registration and we are very soon still going to launch what's now in closed beta. We will continue to listen to and work with our passionate users and developers. And yes, we will even release that iPhone Plazer," the company said. "It was important to make sure that whoever buys us is actually interested in running and improving the service. So be prepared for some continuous improvements in the months to come."

Plazes also said it would remain located in Berlin; once the acquisition is complete it will join Nokia's local location-based services team in Berlin, itself a former startup called gate5.

It is a natural acquisition for Nokia, given its push into location-based services, navigation among them. The company is in the midst of an acquisition of digital map supplier Navteq; personal navigation device maker TomTom acquired Navteq competitor Tele Atlas in June of this year.