Well that didn’t take long. Just four days in 2010 and we already have an acquisition. Social networking application Seesmic has acquired the social status updater Ping.fm.
The move positions the various Seesmic applications (web, desktop, and mobile) to be able to update some 50 social networks very easily. Seesmic is also acquiring the over 500,000 current Ping.fm users as well as the two co-founders, Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough, who are joining the Seesmic team full time.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur tells us that Duffy and McCullough are “becoming Seesmic shareholders obviously and key part of the management team.“
On January 1, Le Meur wrote that a 2010 goal for Seesmic was to have 1 million status updates a day. This acquisition will make hitting that much easier as Ping.fm adds some 200,000 updates a day to Seesmic’s arsenal. Le Meur promises that all of the Seesmic applications will gain Ping.fm integration shortly.
More importantly, Seesmic is promising to maintain and extend Ping.fm’s API and platform (there are about 100 applications that currently use Ping.fm for various reasons). Undoubtedly, they hope that this will be a compelling part of their upcoming plug-in support for Seesmic, as well. And Seesmic users will now be able to use Ping.fm’s core features such as being able to update via IM, SMS, and email.
This addition is a big plus for Seesmic as they aim to become the go-to application for social network updating. Rival Brizzly, by comparison, can only update Twitter and Facebook.
(Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, but I’m not)
Congrats to Sean and Adam. I’ve recently started using seesmic web and blackberry for all my twitter interaction, so adding ping will be great, as I use ping to post updates to my other social networks.
And now the musketeers are formed
Cheers to that. Alot of people still don’t know how to harness ping-fm, this website is one of those things that will make you sratch your head and say ‘Oh I should have know this stuff years ago” See how you can automate it for your website: http://bit.ly/pingfm-how-to-automate-it
Just one way on how you can use it.
Congrats to Sean and Adam
sorry about the double post. the page froze up.
So it’s a triple post?
Good for them, congrats
Now, that’s an interesting acquisition that makes a whole lot of sense.
Le Meur wants Seesmic to hit 1 million status updates a day? It’s an ambitious goal, but certainly one that they can reach, especially now that they acquired Ping.fm
Thanks for the news, I’ll be following this closely.
Wow they have that much traffic?
I love ping.fm! What a great service. Please treat her nicely Seesmic.
How can you mention Brizzly as their rival. Surely TweetDeck deserves to be mentioned in that spot first. No matter what Brizzly can do, is ANY non-mobile twitter related application as popular as TweetDeck?
I was surprised to see Brizzly as rival and not TweeDeck as well. From any of the tracking data that I have seen, Tweetdeck is far and away the most popular Twitter/SM desktop client.
Seesmic appears to be making a lot of the right moves though, so this should be a fascinating battle to watch in 2010.
And I think the whole idea of a set of popular client applications able to update multiple social networks deserves a more in depth analysis
yeah I think maybe they mean web based only competitor.
anybody making money in this space?
LOL great question… These guys have tons of money with no real business model.
Congrats to Adam and Sean! Having worked down the hall from them for the better part of a year (here in Tulsa)… I can tell you, those guys know how to put it together! Loic, fantastic move man!
site is vulnerable.
its insecure.
I have been impressed with Seesmic’s recent developments, such as embracing Twitter lists before many of their competitors.
This addition of the useful and highly reliable Ping.fm to their fold is another example of Loic’s leadership.
Missing the customary full disclosure that Arriginton is an investor in Seesmic.
maybe this will finally unsnarl getting ping.fm to authenticate seesmic accounts, which, so far, has been a nightmare for myself and (going by the posts on the ping.fm support board) others as well.
the deal kinda hoses hootsuite a bit, as it was the other major web app i could think of that had ping.fm integration.
The article states that they will maintain the API, so that should be a full show-stopper. I’m one of those odd-ball Brizzly users. I don’t usually tweet mobile so the Seesmic client(s) just sits unused for me. However, Brizzly’s lack of identi.ca / ping.fm, proper bit.ly attribution (uses bit.ly but won’t use your API key) etc may be just enough to shift me to Seesmic now.
Incidentally, twitstat has Hootsuite at #6, Seesmic as #5. Top 4 are Web, Tweetdeck, Tweetie then twitterfeed. http://www.twitstat.com/twitterclientusers.html
Combining ping.fm and Seesmic on that same chart moves it to number 3.
Brizzly is holding #39 with 0.33 % of the market.
So I’d have to agree that TweetDeck is the champ.
Check http://www.hellotxt.com , ping italian competitor.
Please someone enlighten me about Seesmic’s & Ping.fm’s business models.
Sure this acquisition makes sense for Seesmic but how are they going to turn it into revenues?
As I see it Seesmic could make money by:
1) Charge for the app (not likely is it that good compared to its competitors…)
2) Append commercial messages to tweets (..)
None of these are worth funding of 12MUSD..
Note: Seesmic/Ping.fm are thought of as competitors to my company.
The valley has long been a place that rewarded calculated risk. Status updates are important, and there will players that figure out how to make money in this space.
The data and positioning that companies like tweetdeck, seesmic, etc. are establishing is valuable, they are taking a calculated risk that they’ll be able to figure out how to monetize. It’s not an unreasonable risk to take for professional investors.
tyler: where do you work now?
That picture of me rules. Fresh out of an Austin rainstorm and 30lbs heavier.
Ping.fm is the bomb. Do it harm, Seesmis, and we’ll take you down!!!
Interesting move by Seesmic, which has deftly transitioned their strategy over the last year or so. I really do like the approach they’re taking and this is a good move to reach as many social networks as possible, but am I the only one who gets annoyed with people who have their twitter messages on Facebook? I feel they’re different mediums almost that require a different type of content.
I’m often guilty of that FB-tweet evil and I’ll agree with you because many FB users have no idea what a tweet is and don’t understand the message.
I sort of assumed there would eventually be some sort of style-sheet / transform in development to fix / filter it a bit more. Sort of in the same fashion my Disqus comment can be tweeted and posted to a wall, but as a summary / link, or blog announcement “Posted: My blog title (bit.ly / wp.me link) …” which may be appropriate for both a FB wall and Tweet.
So essentially I have the choice of manually multi-posting (and really, I’ve moved on seconds after I hit the tweet button, which is what Ping.fm is supposed to solve), or posting sometimes more than I really wanted.
Personally, I use a Ping.fm / Friendfeed (because it has retaggr integration) combination, but I can figure out a way to complicate the simplest of solutions.
Did someone photopshop Henry the 8th into this picture or did he get tweet-ed out of his grave for the occasion?
Adam Duffy is a great guy. I hope we’ll still see him around at the various conferences!
Congratulations to Sean (King of Ping) & Adam for what, 2-3 years of hard work getting out in front, and getting a nice payday I assume! And I like the move by Seesmic, they are positioning themselves well to be the defacto social updating tool across all of the platforms. Well done Loic!
Disclosure: I embody awesomeness.
Sean has a nice butt.
The worst part about this whole thing is that Sean now stares at the side of my head all day through a birds nest of wires.
Hard to see a real business here.
The Seesmic Privacy Policy leaves a lot to be desired:
http://seesmic.com/docs/Privacy.html
”
Seesmic Privacy
Coming Soon
“
Born free
Marketed free
Run free
Burn free
Acquired for dollars
Show me the money ! (business model)