Nokia and Plazes (www.plazes.com) announced an
agreement for Nokia to acquire substantially all assets of Plazes, a
privately-owned start-up company of 13 people with its principal
operations in Berlin. Plazes provides 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 or future.
Plazes, Nokia will be able to extend its context-based service offering
with social presence and time-based activity planning features. Plazes
adds the elements of "place" and "time" to social networking through
features that allow people to alert friends of their activity and
location; review their own and others' past activities; share their
experiences and make plans with friends, who are then able to respond
with comments and suggestions as well as their own location information.
agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to
close in the third quarter 2008. After closing, Plazes will become part
of Nokia's Services & Software unit.
"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 Services & Software. "In
addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring
on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity
services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this
area."
"Nokia
shares our vision of the social activity space and of how we can
together develop the service that Plazes provides today," said Felix
Petersen, co-founder of Plazes. "We feel proud of what the Plazes team
has achieved so far with its pioneering work in context-aware services
and we feel even more excited about what's to come next."