Nokia To Buy Social Geotracking Startup

Nokia, the world's largest mobile device manufacturer, on Monday said it will acquire Plazes, a Berlin-based startup that makes a Web-based social network for geotracking and location based services, a move Espoo, Finland-based Nokia said will offer services that help users track space and time.

Plazes, a privately-owned company of 13 employees founded in 2006, makes a "context-aware social activity service that people can use to plan, record and share their social activities: why they are at a given location at a given time, whether in the past, present of future," Nokia said in a statement.

The terms of the acquisition were not immediately released.

"This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy," said Niklas Savander, head of Nokia's service and software division, in a statement. "In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area."

By adding Plazes to the fold, Nokia said it can extend its context- and location-based services offerings to add a social networking angle and presence and time-based activity planning features to its Ovi Web portal.

Plazes adds place and time to social networking by offering features that let users alert friends to their activities and locations; review their own and others' past activities; share their experiences; and make plans with friends, who can then respond with comments and suggestions along with their own location information. Plazes social networks also offer privacy features so times and locations can only be viewed by selected friends and groups.

Plazes users can use the software on their Mac or PC to update their locations or send an SMS text message from their mobile device with embedded location information. Those same applications can be used to find the locations of others as well, Nokia said. Locations on Plazes can be updated using desktop software that automatically pinpoints a user's location through Wi-Fi, SMS or its Web portal. Users can subscribe to their friends' or groups of friends' activity streams along with specific locations. Along with updating locations via the Web or by text message, Plazes also offers a number of third party applications that use its public API.

Felix Petersen, Plazes co-founder, said the company is excited about the acquisition and its future with Nokia.

"Nokia shares our vision of the social activity space and how we can together develop the service that Plazes provides today," he said in a statement.

The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, will make Plazes the latest segment of Nokia's services and software unit.

The Plazes buy falls in line with other Nokia acquisitions, which included Berlin-based Gate5 in 2006, which added maps and navigation to Nokia's software portfolio as Nokia Maps. In 2007, Nokia also picked up Navteq, a data mapping company.