Zynga To Acquire Flock, The Social Browser That You Never Used

Jeudi, 06 Janvier 2011 02:29

Zynga To Acquire Flock, The Social Browser That You Never Used

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Zynga is acquiring Flock, a beleaguered startup founded in 2005 by Bart Decrem and Geoffrey Arone, we’ve confirmed. The deal should be announced shortly.

The company has raised nearly $30 million in venture capital, although the last round was

closed in 2008. We do not know the terms of the acquisition. Both Google and Twitter were also bidding for Flock, we’ve heard from one source – perhaps to get Flock’s engineering talent, which is very highly regarded.

Flock first launched it’s social browser in 2005, and we wrote about it in August of that year. At the time, prior to Twitter and the rise of Facebook, “social” meant writing blogs and social bookmarking, and not much else. Flock was not a hit.

It struggled over the years, eventually switching from using from Mozilla to Chromium as its core. But usage was never realy there. And now they have a well-backed competitor in a market that’s never been proven to exist.

This is Zynga’s eighth acquisition in as many months: XPD in Beijing (May), Challenge Games in Austin (June), Unoh Games in Tokyo (August), Conduit Labs in Boston (August), Dextrose AG in Frankfurt (September), Bonfire Studios in Dallas (October) and Newtoy Inc. in McKinney, Texas (December). Lots of acquisitions, and lots of hiring.

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