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Nokia acquires social platform

Article Date:  Jun 24 2008

Plazes, a Swiss-based developer of a platform that helps people coordinate social activities online, has been acquired by Finnish mobile giant Nokia. VC firm Doughty Hanson, an investor in Plazes, will fully exit the company on completion of the deal, which is expected in the third quarter of this year.

No financial details of the deal have been disclosed. Doughty Hanson invested €2.7 million (£2.1 million) in Plazes in February last year.

The acquisition provides an exit for Plazes’ business angel investors, including Swiss journalist and entrepreneur Esther Dyson and Marc Andreessen, the US entrepreneur and co-author of the Mosaic web browser.

Niklas Savander, head of Nokia’s services and software division, comments: ‘This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy.’

Felix Petersen, founder of Plazes, says that the deal will make the company’s platform available ‘to millions of Nokia customers both online and on hundreds of millions of mobile devices.’

Plazes allows its users to share information about their physical location and plans for social activities with friends or a wider community of users.

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