So finally the official word is in, with a very short blog post by CEO Marko Ahtisaari: Dopplr has been acquired by Nokia.
Update: Nokia’s press release
Update 2: Dopplr angel investor Martin Varsavsky on the deal: ‘Nokia as a force of good in the European start up scene’
No word on price, but when Michael Arrington broke the news last week on TechCrunch, he wrote that Nokia had picked up the fledgling company for between €10 million and €15 million ($15 million – $22 million based on current exchange rates).
Ahtisaari doesn’t share any details about the acquisition, other than the fact that Nokia ’shared their vision of Social Atlas‘, and also adds that nothing will change about the service short-term:
The acquisition does not change the current Dopplr service which is available at Dopplr.com and on platforms where Dopplr is integrated, like Flickr and Twitter. As always, if you so wish, you can get a copy of your data from your account.
TC first covered Dopplr back in 2007 when it closed on seed funding, of which they supposedly raised only €1.25 million or so in total.
Mike Butcher did a very good analysis of Dopplr last week, titled: “Congrats to Dopplr? Maybe. But before the champagne, some context” which you want to reread if you’d like to learn more about the startup and the deal.
Well, I don’t use Dopplr much. Hope that Nokia integrates it with its services ASAP.
What do they think they will do with Dopplr: a phone business buying a travel site. I don’t really get it and plus it seems very expensive. They may put the webpage as an application in the phone I guess.
I agree with you. Nokia needs to find their focus. They’re a huge company with great products, but their relevancy seems to have waned. Next to Apple and Sony I love their phones.
i also agree with u people that they will use it in their phone but we should wait more. may be they has some other idea of using this apparently useless site.
Just because they are a phone company, doesn’t mean they don’t know a thing or two about travel sites. I mean we are talking about a multimillion dollar corporation here.
Computer Advice Blog
Business IT Support
loopt is next….
The ability to add POI on the fly is needed feature for some countries that doesn’t have services like yelp. I hope to see nokia integrate
it with their navteq maps ( and hopefully people can improve it by adding places)
I LOVE Dopplr. The usability is beautifully simple. I use it to plan my schedule ahead of time, and as a diary to see where I was on certain dates, looking back in time.
The do a good job of making me feel guilty by letting me know how many tonnes of carbon I burn each year.
I travel a lot and like to keep in touch with people when I do. But I have had a hard time getting used to using Dopplr (meaning, I just don’t use it). I find myself using TripIt more often via LinkedIn, because most people I’d want to meet up with are already in my LinkedIn contacts list. So it’s not clear to me what value Nokia saw in this deal.
Oh, and air travel generates maybe 3% of global carbon output, so I don’t feel guilty at all. If the carbon nuts had their way, nobody would travel anywhere and the world would be a far worse place.
Hmm.. Well, that accusition doesnt make much sense. Watch nokia scrap doplr within 18 months…..
Quoteth Financial Times:
“Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but Nokia said that it paid “a fraction” of the €10m ($15m) purchase price reported on Techcrunch last week.”
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/09/nokia-maps-a-path-to-dopplrs-door/
Ha! Today on Bloomberg Nokia announced its re-structuring its design department. Who’s heading its new design wing? The f’n CEO of Dopplr, getting his old job back…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=am0CqlyI5_uQ
I guess it would be in their mind. Thay must be thing about other idea.