Rumors came out earlier this month that Yahoo was interested in Hulu after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer met with members of Hulu’s executive team. Hulu’s current owners — News Corps, Disney, and Comcast — tried to sell the company for around $2 billion in June 2011 after irreconcilable differences over business strategy. No one came close to the asking price and the sale was officially terminated. Instead, the owners decided to focus on growth.

A report in AllThingsD today said “a person familiar with the process” revealed that Yahoo submitted an offer this morning.

Hulu offers high-quality videos of popular TV and movies. Its revenue increased by more than 65 percent last year to $695 million. It has more than 4 million paying subscribers and had commercials from more than 1,000 advertisers in 2012, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier. The content is free or costs $8 a month for newer programming, and advertisers are willing to pay high prices to run their ads alongside the videos. A report in Bloomberg said that Disney prefers the advertising-focused business model, while News Corp. wants to rely on subscriptions. Now a number of other companies are entering the bidding fray to join the discussion (and rewards).

Other bidders include cable TV provider Time Warner Cable, Amazon, Guggenheim Digital Media, and former News Corp. President Peter Chernin, who made a $500 million offer.

With this renewed interest from buyers, the real question is how much are they willing to pay?

Yahoo recently placed and lost a bid to acquire a $300 million, 75 percent majority stake in Dailymotion, a French video service. This deal fell through after the French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg decided he didn’t want to see a successful French business sold to an American company. Hulu could be an alternative option for Yahoo, which recently signed an exclusive deal for all Saturday Night Live clips and acquired popular social media site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo is clearly eager to scoop up popular content that it can monetize through advertising.

With that huge cash deal fresh on the books, does Yahoo have the resources to throw down for Hulu as well? And if so, how much is it willing to spend? Until this all gets settled, I’ll be watching the latest episodes of Modern Family for “research.”

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

While rumors have been swirling for days, Yahoo finally confirmed this morning that it has acquired popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion. Notably, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promises Yahoo won’t ruin the Tumblr experience.

“We promise not to screw it up,” Mayer said in a blog post today. “Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same, as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo will help Tumblr get even better, faster.”

Tumblr is a huge platform for blogging and sharing content. The service hosts 105 million blogs, and 900 new posts go up per second. It has 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups each day.

The big weakness for Tumblr is actually making money. It only pulled in $13 million in revenue in 2012. But that’s where Yahoo can come in and help the company find more ways to make cash through advertising.

“The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience,” Mayer wrote.

Tumblr CEO Karp has previously been vocally resistent to advertising, but Yahoo plans to find ways for advertising to find its way into the platform. All signs point to Yahoo adding opt-in advertising so bloggers can enable ads and potentially get a slice of revenue for ads on said blogs.

Yahoo will pay approximately $1.1 billion for Tumblr — all in cash. Prior to today, New York City-based Tumblr had raised $125 million in funding from investors including Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Spark Capital, and CrunchFund.

Karp describes the deal as “awesome” and insists that Tumblr won’t change much. “We’re not turning purple,” Karp wrote in a blog post. “Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

Marissa Mayer photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

AllThingsD reported this morning that Yahoo’s board approved a $1.1 billion all-cash acquisition of microblogging site Tumblr.

ATD had earlier stated that the board would be meeting on Sunday to consider the acquisition. Yahoo plans to announce the acquisition on Monday, according to “numerous sources” contacted by ATD.

“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” a Yahoo spokesperson told VentureBeat this morning.

Yahoo has scheduled a mysterious event for Monday morning in New York, to announce “something special.” If that “something” is the Tumblr acquisition, it would be quite surprising, since the event was announced before the board reportedly confirmed the acquisition. But it would also be a convenient venue to announce a major deal like this.

If it pans out, this would be Yahoo’s largest and perhaps riskiest acquisition since former Google executive Marissa Mayer assumed the chief executive job. By one metric, Tumblr is massive: It hosts 51 billion blog posts, a number that grows by 74 million new posts each day. It draws 216 million visitors globally each month, who collectively generate 16 billion monthly pageviews. That kind of monster traffic puts Tumblr in the ninth position among the most-popular U.S. websites.

However, it generated just $13 million in revenues last year, its first year of revenues, as it slowly began integrating ads into its content stream. The company anticipated making $100 million in revenues this year.

As with Facebook’s acquisition of revenue-less Instagram, the acquisition is less about bringing in a new source of revenue and more about capturing growth and traffic. Yahoo’s traffic, while enormous, has stagnated. It desperately needs a faster-growing property, along with a younger, hipper demographic, and Tumblr would seem to provide both.

That is, if Yahoo doesn’t kill it off or stifle its growth through negligence and mismanagement, as it has done with so many previous acquisitions, including Flickr, Delicious, Geocities, Upcoming, and more.

Top photo: Tumblr founder David Karp is about to be a very rich man. Source: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat.

If you can’t be cool, why not buy someone who is? That’s what Yahoo is looking to do with an investment in — or perhaps outright acquisition of — blogging service Tumblr, whose valuation could be as high as $1 billion.

All Things D first reported the rumors of a Yahoo investment in Tumblr, and Adweek followed up citing sources of its own. Adweek’s report seems more certain that Yahoo is interested in an outright acquisition, while ATD’s report is more circumspect.

Tumblr has raised $125 million in funding to date at a reported valuation of $800 million. It is reportedly in talks to raise another round of funding at a reported $1 billion valuation, according to ATD.

While Tumblr is popular, it only made $13 million in revenue last year, when it first started selling ads, and hopes to grow that to $100 million in revenue this year.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has already presided over several acquisitions as head of the company and just a week ago she snapped up two more startups — GoPollGo and Milewise. Most of the deals thus far have been much smaller deals, more focused on hiring strong talent rather than getting shiny new products. In fact, Yahoo has shut down most of the services it has purchased.

A deal to buy New York City-based blogging powerhouse Tumblr would act in an opposite fashion, and Yahoo would almost certainly leave Tumblr’s products fully intact. But Tumblr has hardly monetized its large audience and just a few weeks ago it introduced a mobile ad platform to let brands to advertise inside Tumblr’s mobile apps. If Yahoo were to take its advertising know-how and apply that to Tumblr’s platform, it could lead to big bucks.

“If you could pick a company that fits in with what Marissa Mayer has demonstrated in her career — aesthetics software technology and fast-growing — you could not land on a better choice,” a source told AllThingsD.

Tumblr’s investors include Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Spark Capital, and CrunchFund.

Yahoo did not immediately respond with comment but we will update this post if the company gets back to us.

Marissa Mayer photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

The latest company rumored to be interested in buying streaming video service Hulu is Yahoo, according to a Bloomberg report that cites unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

The report indicates that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with members of Hulu’s executive team to learn more about what the service had to offer as well as what an acquisition deal might entail. And Yahoo isn’t the only company Hulu executives have spoken with recently, either. According to Bloomberg’s source, Amazon is also apparently interested.

Hulu’s owners, News Corp., Disney, and Comcast, want to sell the service due to disagreements over Hulu’s business strategy and because each of them would like to pursue separate digital strategies for their broadcast and cable networks. But that much has been known for a while. The more interesting side of the story is in who would buy Hulu and why would they want it.

Yahoo’s renewed interest in buying Hulu may be a result of failed negotiations to purchase French video service Dailymotion. Yahoo was believed to have been offering upwards of $300 million for a 75 percent majority stake in Dailymotion, but last month French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg decided he didn’t want to sell such a successful French business to an American company. With the Dailymotion deal on ice, it is possible that Mayer is looking to Hulu as a plan B for boosting Yahoo’s presence in streaming video. Yahoo also recently signed an exclusive deal for all Saturday Night Live clips.

But one thing that may prevent Yahoo from acquiring Hulu could be the asking price. Last year, Hulu owners failed in an attempt to sell the service for around $2 billion, with none of the potential buyers coming anywhere close. And even with Hulu reporting record growth, it’ll be tough to find anyone willing to entertain a $2 billion sale.

In addition to Yahoo and Amazon, Guggenheim Digital Media has previously expressed interest in buying Hulu. Former News Corp. president Peter Chernin is also said to have made an offer to by the service for $500 million.

Photo by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

After spending $1 billion on Instagram last year to keep pace with the mobile photo explosion, Facebook is now reportedly ready to spend a similar amount on popular social driving app Waze.

The news is being reported by Israeli news site Calcalist, as well as other local publications. Calcalist reporter Assaf Gilad previously broke the news on major Israeli startup acquisitions like Facebook’s $100 million Face.com buy and Apple’s Anobit purchase, the Next Web points out.

Waze’s smartphone apps offer free GPS functionality for drivers, but they’re also buoyed by plenty of social data. Drivers can get a real-time view of current driving conditions using Waze and can report traffic issues to local Waze users. The company now has around 45 million users, and it was previously at the heart of acquisition rumors involving Apple and Microsoft.

It may seem a bit strange for Facebook to spend $1 billion on a social GPS app, but it actually makes plenty of sense when you consider Facebook’s mobile ambitions. After all, Facebook didn’t spend $1 billion on Instagram just to get photo filter technology — it bought Instagram to take advantage of its explosive user growth. Similar to Instagram, Waze has a solid base of users who keep its apps open for extended periods.

With Facebook Home, we saw just how far Facebook will go to dominate your mobile experience. (Waze was also prominently displayed as part of Facebook’s Home launch imagery.) Waze would give Facebook a way grab the eyeballs of millions of drivers, which would be a worthy followup to its recent local search efforts.

If true, the news would show the big difference in the way Facebook approaches acquisitions compared to a more traditional company like Microsoft. Facebook isn’t afraid to pay big for young startups with plenty of traction — meanwhile Microsoft is reportedly looking to purchase Nook’s troubled digital business for $1 billion.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Waze has raised $67 million so far from investors including Kleiner Perkins, BluerRun Ventures, and Magma Venture Partners.

Trulia buys Market Leader for $355 million

Yes, that’s actually a company named Market Leader, the phrase is not just a hopeful description. Trulia, the real-estate marketplace, announced the deal today.

Market Leader provides a suite of software solutions that real estate professionals use to manage their business online. Products include a website-builder, tools for lead generation tools and marketing, and contact management. The combined marketplace will have 46,000 premium subscribers, which the company said is more than any other online real estate marketplace. This deal means Trulia can provide an “end-to-end solution” for these professionals.

More details here.

Microsoft offering $1B for Nook?

This deal is not yet a deal, but a rumor: Microsoft may be attempting to buy Nook’s digital media and tablet business. More details …

NowThisNews raises $4.8M

NowThisNews, a video-news startup from the brains of former Huddington Post execs, has just raised a healthy round of institutional funding. The $4.8 million round (out of a total $6 million in equity the startup is attempting to raise, according to SEC documents) comes from Oak Investment, Lerer Ventures, Bedrocket, and new investor SoftBank Capital.

Here’s the full story.

HealthTap Secures $24 Million Series B

Health Q&A startup HealthTap has raised $24 million in its second round of funding and added former Square COO Keith Rabois to its board of directors, the company said today.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HealthTap offers a popular service for doctors to answer questions from everyday folks. More than 38,000 accredited doctors in the U.S. are on the platform and more than 8 million unique visitors connect with those doctors each month via apps for smartphones, tablets, and the web.

Full details here.

Octopus leads £2m funding round into TrialReach

Octopus today announced that it has led a £2 million ($3.1 million U.S.) investment round into TrialReach, an online platform that is transforming clinical trials by connecting patients with healthcare companies and research organisations to make new treatments available more quickly and efficiently. Octopus is investing alongside existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, which first invested in TrialReach in 2011.

Axiologix announces $7.5 Million preferred equity investment

Axiologix, Inc., a technology services company focused on delivering cloud-based products and services announced today that it has entered into a $7.5 million Preferred Equity Investment with Ironridge Technology Co. The company plans to use the proceeds from this investment to fund operational growth, make strategic and immediately accretive acquisitions, and to pay down remaining debt over time.

JumpStart invests $250,000 in eFuneral

End-of-life planning startup eFuneral has received a $250,000 investment to help people find resources online for funeral planning including funeral home reviews, estate planning, and cemetery information.

“This industry is completely antiquated,” Belsito told VentureBeat. “We saw a big gap and decided to make a better solution.”

More details here.

photo credit: DerrickT via photopin cc

NetSuite, the cloud financial software company, has just told the world its latest good news: It has acquired OrderMotion, another cloud company that specializes in order management.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We focus on the order at NetSuite,” said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson in a recent VentureBeat interview. “Order management is at the heart of our transactions. … The transaction at the center of the business process is defining big winners.”

Of course, NetSuite already has its own order management system, but in a statement on the news, the company said it was a “important and complex business challenge” requiring outside augmentation to meet their customers’ needs, which range from e-commerce to brick-and-mortar retail to telemarketing.

NetSuite will be using OrderMotion’s technology for continuity and replenishment, as well as supporting direct response marketing efforts. The resulting product, the companies say, will be useful for almost every kind of business, from B2B, B2C, and retail use cases to wholesale distribution and manufacturing.

Order management is a great compliment to NetSuite’s commerce-as-a-service platform, which it launched last year to help any kind of company attain Amazonian online retail goals.

“We’re transforming how your business operates and how your business interacts with other businesses,” said Nelson at that time. “Customers want to transact with several different devices and they want you to remember them across devices.”

Image credit: nadja_robot/Flickr

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has acquired seven companies since taking the helm of the once-foundering search/media company. Each of the first six has been shut down.

Now, it looks like it’s time for Yahoo’s latest acquisition, Astrid.

In October, it was Stamped that Yahoo shut down, and in December it was OnTheAir. In January it was Snip.it. In February it was Alike, and in March it was Summly and Jybe. At least some of those were acqui-hires, bringing in skilled teams that Yahoo wanted. But in all cases, the startups were closed, and users were left hanging.

“Six for six … all shut down,” says Omar Al-Hajjar, the VP of marketing for online task manager Sandglaz. “I think Astrid is headed for a similar fate once the 90 days ends.”

Al-Hajjar is taking about former Astrid CEO Jon Paris’ 90-day promise, which he made when Yahoo acquired Astrid:

Over the next 90 days, Astrid will continue to work as-is, and we will no longer be accepting new premium subscriptions. To make future changes as easy as possible, we’ll be in touch with users shortly to share how to download data.

That’s about as clear as it gets in corporate announcements, and it seems to be confirmation that Astrid will go the way of all recent Yahoo acquisitions: into the deadpool. At least, in terms of its existing service and existing users. And four million users will need to find a new way to manage their tasks.

So Sandglaz is making some hay while the sun shines and offering simple data import straight from Astrid into Sandglaz. All existing Astrid users have to do is sign into Sandglaz, export their data from Astrid, and import it into Sandglaz.

It’s fairly simple and quite useful if you’re now looking for an Astrid-like service. And Sandglaz engineers built it in just two days, apparently.

“This isn’t really a knock on Astrid,” Al-Hajjar said in an email. “Just pointing out that there might be a larger trend where users of services that get shut down turn into refugees that look for competing services.”

Specifically, Al-Hajjar references the big kahuna of recently announced shutdowns: Google Reader, which resulted in Feedly picking up 500,000 new users in two days, and other RSS services like NewsBlur seeing massive growth as well.

This means, most likely, that task-management acquisition Astrid will be shut down as well and that its four million users will need to find another place to manage their time.

Which, if it proceeds as currently indicated, means that Marissa Mayer will be 7-for-7 on acquisition shutdowns.

For users, Sandglaz has made it clear that it’s open for business. One other option is Wunderlist, which has also built a “Farewell Astrid rescue.”

Image credit: ShutterStock/Sorry we’re closed

Security heavyweight McAfee has agreed to acquire network firewall business Stonesoft for $389 million in cash, the company announced today.

Helsinki, Finland-based Stonesoft offers a portfolio of firewalls, SSL VPN solutions, and prevention systems that are suitable to help both small and large businesses. It has more than 6,500 customers worldwide.

McAfee is most interested in Stonesoft’s next-gen firewall technology, and it’s saying that combining Stonesoft’s offerings with its own cloud-based Global Threat Intelligence service will give its customers even better network security.

“With the pending addition of Stonesoft’s products and services, McAfee is making a significant investment in next-generation firewall technology,” McAfee President Michael DeCesare said in a statement. “These solutions anticipate emerging customer needs in a continually evolving threat landscape. … We plan to integrate Stonesoft’s offerings with other McAfee products to realize the power of McAfee’s Security Connected strategy.”

Pile of money via HamsterMan/Shutterstock

Streaming music powerhouse Spotify has acquired playlist and song discovery application Tunigo, which will help Spotify bring in more employees that can improve discovery.

Tunigo offers several music discovery features and playlists for any activity you might want to do. It has its own Spotify app, which has been in the top 10 app list since the Spotify app platform launched. It also has iPhone and Android apps.

“Tunigo helps users find great music for every moment, and we’ve been working very closely with Spotify over the past few years,” Tunigo CEO Nick Holmstén said in a statement. “This is the perfect match from a music discovery perspective. We’re passionate about music and technology and looking forward to further innovating within the music discovery space.”

The terms of the acquisition were not revealed, although Tunigo had reportedly raised about $3 million in funding. Spotify told us that Tunigo’s app will remain inside Spotify and that its team will move to Spotify’s offices in Stockholm and New York.

Photo via Tunigo

Let’s start with that one:

DreamWorks buys a YouTube network for $33 million

DreamWorks Animation bought YouTube network AwesomenessTV for $33 million, which could go as high as $117 million with incentives. That’s a massive price for a channel built on the YouTube platform, but AwesomenessTV has “aggregated over 14 million subscribers and 800 million video views.”

“Kloud” startup Kloudless raises $1 million

Kloudless, which helps companies move data on-demand from one cloud service to another, raised “approximately $1 million in new funding to grow its customer base.” Participants included the founder and CEO of Yammer, David Sacks, and Tim Draper, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Lex Machina raises $4 million

Legal and patent-focused startup Lex Machina raised a $4 million series A round to continue to build its machine learning and natural language processing legal text classification system.

MindMixer grabs $4 million

MindMixer closed a $4 million funding round to expand its current set of services and tools, as well as hire developers. The funding round was led by Nelnet with existing investors Dundee Venture Capital and Optimas Group also participating.

HybridCluster raises $1 million

HybridCluster, an early stage software solution provider to the cloud and hosting industry, announced completion of a $1m fundraising, and immediate availability of version 2.0 of its suite of storage, replication and web clustering software. Based in Bristol, UK, HybridCluster provides high availability, intelligent auto-scaling, and rapid restore software.

A variety of angels led the funding round, including Jason Seats (former VP of Engineering of Rackspace Cloud), Charles Grimsdale (partner at Eden Ventures and former CEO & founder of OD2), Anil Hansjee (former Head of Corporate Development, Google EMEA), and Toivo Annus (former Head of Engineering at Skype).

MyNewFinancialAdvisor closes a $1.1 million series A

MyNewFinancialAdvisor, which helps advisory firms grow their client base via online connections, closed $1.1M in a Series A round of financing led by Siemer Ventures, and said another round was imminent.

MNFA also says it has on-boarded $2.35 billion in investable new client assets.

nChannel raises a $2.4 million Series A funding round

nChannel, which makes a cloud-based multi-channel management platform, announced the closing of a $2.4 million Series A funding round led by the Ohio TechAngels Funds. nChannel says that in the last year it has processed over 833,000 subscriber transactions worth over $365 million.

photo credit: Viktor Hertz via photopin cc

Yahoo is apparently no longer interested in purchasing France-based streaming video Dailymotion, according to a Wall Street Journal report today.

The news about Yahoo’s potential deal emerged last month, with the company rumored to be buying as much as 75 percent of Dailymotion for an estimated $300 million. The portion is currently owned by France Telecom SA (of which the French state is a major shareholder of).

However, WSJ’s sources indicate that talks broke down after a April 12 meeting where French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg told Yahoo’s chief operating officer Henrique de Castro that he didn’t want an American company to buy the “French Internet success story” that is Dailymotion — one of the country’s few companies with global prominence. (Sacrebleu!)

But seriously at this point, I’m not sure any American company will want to deal with the baggage associated with acquiring a large French tech company, or at least not at the price originally offered. France isn’t exactly a favorite among big tech companies, anyways. The country fined Google for breaching privacy rules over its Google Maps service (as in, because Google provides maps.) And more recently when it fined Google €60 million ($79 million) for providing its Google News service without paying royalties to French media companies.

Yahoo’s strategy with Dailymotion could have turned it into a fierce competitor to rival Google’s streaming user-generated video site YouTube. It would have also helped satisfy Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s long-term goal of relying less on expensive content licensing deals in favor of user generated media.

The report indicates that Montebourg wanted to renew talks with Yahoo for a deal that didn’t let the company have a majority stake in Dailymotion, which Yahoo wisely walked away from.

Tyler Muse is founder of LingoLive.

Hours after April Fool’s day, LiveMocha CEO Michael Schutzler announced that his company was being acquired by the behemoth he had battled for five years: Rosetta Stone.

There are 5 reasons why you should be skeptical this acquisition will save Rosetta Stone, which has been running in the red for the last few years.

1) It’s all about mobile

LiveMocha does not have an app. Their users have been begging for it. Competitive language learning apps have nailed design and usability for a fraction of the cost, including Duolingo, a free app that is enjoying rave reviews and even beating Rosetta Stone at their own game.

2) Rosetta Stone and LiveMocha have entirely different users, pricing and acquisition channels

LiveMocha provides a freemium model which allows users to connect with other native learners in the hopes they can upsell them on the site’s premium materials (at ~$99). The problem was simple: they gave too much away for free.

Rosetta Stone puts a large price stamp (~$300) on their shiny yellow boxes of CD-ROM’s (yes you are reading this thirteen years into the 21st century). The company spends well over $100 million per year “selling the dream” and maximizing on the buyer’s point of least resistance, a concept LiveMocha never seemed to grasp. They’ve also excelled at landing governmental contracts and institutional sales. All this despite what people have to say about their product (more on that next).

Unfortunately, neither strategy is moving the needle: privately-held LiveMocha sold to Rosetta Stone for about half of what they raised in capital over their 5 years of existence. Former LiveMocha product and marketing executive Clint Schmidt gave me an interesting perspective from the lens of venture capital, telling me this is a “good deal for LiveMocha investors. They made a bet on the executive team and on a thesis that didn’t bear fruit. Getting half your money back in those circumstances is not a bad outcome. But I’m not sure that RST shareholders should attribute much upside to this.”

RST has been running in the red over the last few years. A former president at Rosetta Stone told me this week that the deal doesn’t compromise RST’s two biggest strengths, their breadth of languages (34 total) and brand awareness, yet brings them an active community of language learners that are integrally linked to social media. However, rumblings in the online community indicate that these users won’t stick around for what RST has to offer.

3) Rosetta Stone needs credibility in the online community

Users can easily be informed not only of Rosetta Stone’s shortcomings but also of the countless lower cost and/or free competitors. Today’s buyer only needs to type “rosetta stone review” in Google and watch the red flags flood their screen. As more informed buyers slide increasingly into Rosetta Stone’s demographic “strike zone” (affluent 30-50 year olds), the company’s ability to execute the sale at the buyer’s point of least resistance will crumble.

4) LiveMocha doesn’t provide the missing piece that will make Rosetta Stone’s product more effective

LiveMocha doesn’t bring a lot of credibility beyond being an easy way to connect with other native speakers (and not infuriating people with their price tag). The problem is these natives aren’t teachers so they won’t have the patience or skill to teach you how to speak their language. As Tim Ferriss points out, native English speakers suck at teaching English; it’s merely second nature to them.

So what ends up happening? It’s likely the buyer will just take up a class at the local community college, or meet with a low-cost tutor at a coffee shop. Even more likely is that they’ll just drop the dream altogether rather than “wasting their time and money.” I put this in quotes because I talk to these people every single day… which leads us to our last and most important point.

5) LiveMocha doesn’t meet the single biggest need identified by today’s paying language learners

We’ve interviewed hundreds of language learners, from middle-aged parents to college students and corporate employees alike, and have listened closely to the one consistent, resounding piece of feedback: “I want to learn from a native”. Learn from a native, that’s a pretty simple concept.

Rosetta Stone’s TOTALe platform offers the ability to meet with a live teacher in a group class, only after you’ve progressed past a certain point in their software (long after most users have given up). As for LiveMocha, the site’s native tutors are prohibitively expensive (~$40 per hour) and are provided through a European company called Learnissimo, thereby marginalizing the number one desire of most language learners. Why can’t learning from a native be convenient and personalized without costing an arm-and-a-leg?

Rosetta Stone’s $8.5 million price tag for LiveMocha, while paltry, would have been better spent developing a more robust platform for one-on-one instruction from native teachers.

Translation image via Shutterstock

Tyler Muse is founder of LingoLive and blogs at lingolive.wordpress.com. You can find him on Twitter (@tylermuse) and LinkedIn.

After many rumors and reports, news summarization app Wavii has officially been acquired by Google and the app has been shut down.

The Wavii team in Seattle will move to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. to work on “natural language research.” Wavii used semantic analysis to break down news into data to give users better customized feeds, so the move makes sense.

Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun writes in a statement on its homepage:

You probably know us best for our app that takes the deluge of information streaming across the web and condenses it into fast, fun updates. While we won’t continue to offer this particular service, we’ll be using our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world.

To all of our loyal Wavii users, we owe you a big thanks for all of your feedback and involvement throughout this journey. We look forward to taking our technology to the next level and delighting you with what we come up with next!

Before being acquired, Wavii had raised $2 million in funding from investors including Max Levchin, Dave Morin, SV Angel, Felicis Ventures, Mitch Kapor, Fritz Lanman, Max Ventilla, Shawn Fanning, Rick Marini, and CrunchFund.

Earlier reports say Google paid more than $30 million for Wavii.

Photo via Wavii

Enterprise app business Software AG has acquired cloud platform vendor LongJump, the company announced today.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based LongJump offers a platform-as-a-service (Paas) that allows enterprise app developers to build software with less effort. The company also offers an on-premise PaaS solution with the ability to move apps between LongJump instances.

Software AG said LongJumps’s cloud platform will help it better address small and medium sized enterprise companies that rely on self-service app development. It also indicated that LongJump’s software will be complementary to its already established ARIS, Terracotta, and WebMethods product suites.

LongJump founder and CEO Pankaj Malviya believes his company will be able to take advantage of Software AG’s resources and reach to attract more attention.

“More people across the organization can now participate in processes of innovation and differentiation,” Malviya said in a canned statement. “LongJump can now leverage Software AG’s strength in enterprise connectivity and business process to provide business users and IT departments with more agility to respond to changing business requirements, automate their situational processes, improve team data sharing, and integrate with systems of record.”

Clouds photo via Flickr

Database vendor Actian has acquired “big data” and analytics startup ParAccel, the two companies announced today.

ParAccel caught our eye last year as one of 10 startups leading the way in big data. We specifically liked ParAccel’s leadership in the high-performance analytics space and its work in “pre-crime,” where it helps predict criminal activity before it happens. ParAccel customers include Amazon, The Royal Bank of Scotland, OfficeMax, and MicroStrategy.

Actian believes the acquisition of ParAccel will complement its position as a strong infrastructure player and bring more customers into the fold. Bloor Group chief analyst and co-founder Robin Bloor agrees.

“Actian is building a modern, highly innovative end-to-end database, integration, and analytics solution aimed squarely at solving today’s growing data challenges,” Bloor said in a statement. “With the ability to capture, ingest, analyze, and take action on data at scale, Actian is now very powerfully positioned in the big data and data analytics markets.”

ParAccel told us back in October that it intended to remain an independent company. That said, the decision to be acquired makes some sense because major competitors Vertica and Netezza were purchased by HP and IBM, and that sort of backing helped strengthen their services.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Prior to acquisition, ParAccel had raised more than $90 million in funding from investors including Amazon, Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners, Walden International, Tao Venture Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Top photo via ParAccel

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google is going to likely acquire Wavii, a summary startup that helps you “consume content,” soon. But sources very close to the deal tell VentureBeat that this has not happened yet. 

We reached out to Wavii’s chief executive Adrian Aoun, who declined to comment.

Rumors about a deal between Google and Wavii first appeared last week, although at the time sources close to the companies cast doubt on the story. Now, we understand from multiple sources, a deal is in the works — although it is not final. We believe that it will close within a week.

One source told us that the acquisition price would be between $30 million and $40 million.

Wavii’s technology looks at pieces of content and summarizes them into quick, digestible blurbs people can use to help decide what to read. It’s rumored that the team will move from its Seattle headquarters and join Google’s Knowledge Graph team. We have not been able to independently confirm this, but it makes sense, given Wavii’s language processing capabilities.

Yahoo recently purchased a similar company, Summly, which it has already started incorporating into its mobile apps. When a hot technology is involved, deals like these generally entertain many offers, and this can draw out negotiations.

Wavii was founded in in 2009 and has thus far raised $2 million in funding.

IBM has acquired software delivery startup UrbanCode to better help businesses push out updates of mobile, cloud, social, and big data applications, the company announced today.

Cleveland-based UrbanCode claims to reduce the time it takes to move new apps or updates of apps onto the market. The company offers up its DevOps platform, which includes apps like uDeploy, uBuild, uProvision, and uRelease. These serve to help companies push out updates, take in feedback, and improve quality of apps faster.

Ideally, it will help IBM better connect with social, cloud, and big data app makers that rely on rapid software development and releases.

“Companies that master effective software development and delivery in rapidly changing environments such as cloud, mobile, and social will have a significant competitive advantage,” Kristof Kloeckner, general manager of IBM Rational Software, said in a statement. “With the acquisition of UrbanCode, IBM is uniquely positioned to help businesses from every industry accelerate delivery of their products and services to better meet client demands.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM said it plans to continue supporting UrbanCode clients.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Softbank remains unfazed by Dish’s higher competing offer to acquire Sprint — and it still expects its initial deal with Sprint to go through in a few months.

Yesterday Dish announced that it’s offering Sprint $25.5 billion to purchase Sprint, $5 billion higher than Softbank’s offer to purchase a majority interest in the carrier. Undaunted, Softbank shot back last night with a statement:

SoftBank believes that the agreed terms of our transaction with Sprint offer Sprint shareholders superior short and long term benefits to Dish’s highly conditional preliminary proposal. The SoftBank-Sprint transaction is in the advanced stages of receiving the necessary approvals, and we expect to consummate the transaction on July 1, 2013.

I suppose it would have been more surprising if Softbank said anything else. Investors were less assured in the Japanese carrier’s ability to purchase Sprint following Dish’s offer — its stock fell as much as 9.3 percent in Tokyo today, DealBook reports.

At this point, we’ll just have to wait and see what Sprint decides. With Softbank, it will have an experienced carrier as a majority stakeholder, who will also let Sprint continue to exist as an independent, publicly traded company. Dish’s deal would involve a complete merger and a big bet on the satellite TV company’s vision of offering a variety of  services to compete with cable companies.

Photo: Miki Yoshihito/Flickr

In a bold and surprising move this morning, Dish Network made a $25.5 billion offer to purchase Sprint — a takeover that would satisfy the satellite TV company’s wireless ambitions, while also squashing takeover efforts by Japan’s Softbank.

Dish’s offer is 13 percent more than the $20.1 billion Softbank offered for a 70 percent share of Sprint last year. The big difference: Dish’s deal would be a complete takeover, while Softbank’s would leave Sprint as a separate public company, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The move follows an informal bid by Dish for Clearwire earlier this year. Sprint offered to buy out Clearwire for $2.2 billion back in December, but Dish jumped in with its own $5.5 billion offer. It seemed like Clearwire shareholders were leaning towards Dish’s higher offer, but then Clearwire ended up taking $80 million from Sprint to stay afloat, which indicated that they were back to considering  Sprint’s deal.

By buying Sprint, Dish would have access to both Sprint and Clearwire’s precious wireless spectrum, and it would have the country’s third-largest cellular network. Dish already has more than $9 billion worth of wireless spectrum, and it won approval from regulators last December to use it. But building a network of its own would take forever and likely cost more than what it’s offering for Sprint.

The deal would enable Dish to offer a similar variety of services as competing cables companies: TV, home phone, and Internet service. Charles Ergen, Dish’s chairman, says customers would be able to get Internet access from Sprint’s network via antennas on their roof.

If Dish successfully kills Softbank’s deal with Sprint, Ergen says that it would pay off the $600 million breakup fee owed to the Japanese company.

The real question for Sprint’s shareholders: Are they willing to go with a suitor unproven in the wireless industry? Dish may have a bunch of useful spectrum, but it doesn’t yet have any experience in the mobile world. Softbank, on the other hand, has 32 million mobile subscribers in Japan.

Illustration: Tom Cheredar/VentureBeat

Continuing its focus on mobile technology, Facebook has purchased mobile software startup Osmeta, Facebook has confirmed to VentureBeat today.

The acquisition was apparently made last week and will likely help Facebook beef up new mobile technologies like its new Facebook Home environment that sits on top of mobile devices running Android. Facebook’s purchase was likely more focused on acquiring talent since Osmeta hasn’t actually released a consumer product.

The Osmeta team is made up of 19 engineers that have previously worked at Google, IBM Research, Yahoo Research, and VMware, according to Osmeta’s website. The startup also claims to have experience working on a variety of mobile devices, as shown in the photo above.

Founded in 2012, the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup’s president and CEO Amit Singh may have actually tipped off TechMeme about his company’s purchase last week via Twitter.

Photo via Osmeta; Via TechCrunch.

This is a guest post by Keary Crawford and Wayne Simmons, the authors of “Growth Thinking”

“If it’s not growing, it’s going to die.” Michael Eisner, Former CEO, Walt Disney Company

The relationship between politics and business growth has long been a flashpoint between competing political ideologies.

Reinforcing the idea that growth is political, terms like sequestration, quantitative easing and austerity are now being viewed as the determining factors in whether companies can grow in the future. This is, of course, a myth.

Companies that are inherently growth-focused replace political ideology with the pragmatism needed to achieve and sustain growth. These companies acknowledge that they have virtually no control over political outcomes, and that some level of political volatility will always be present in the business environment. From this understanding, rather than be transfixed or even paralyzed by these factors, they look to convert the ever-changing political winds into opportunities for growth and expansion.

The myth that growth is political is one of many myths that can inhibit the ambition and future growth prospects of companies.

As the pursuit of business growth becomes even more urgent, companies must overcome these myths, some of which include:

Companies Can Buy Growth

Modern finance encourages companies to use mergers and acquisitions to “buy growth.” This process results in the application of favorable accounting treatment that allows companies to adjust their growth rates retroactively— a proxy for real revenue growth. Growth-focused companies don’t buy growth, rather they focus their M&A activities on emerging technologies and complementary offerings that provide them with the differentiation, first-mover advantage and critical mass required to drive high growth.

Finance creates growth

In some finance-dominated corporate environments, growth can be viewed as a mathematical output of complex, internally focused formulas and financial engineering. In the 1990s, for example, while revenues fluctuated or generally trended downward, Exxon was famous for building its culture and communicating its value by using the internal metric of return on capital employed (ROCE). In contrast, growth-focused companies view their health and viability, first and foremost, through the ultimate metric of top-line revenue growth and their ability to sustain that growth. Internal metrics are critical, but top-line revenue growth is an outside-in measure that determines the ultimate outcome—the rate at which companies are creating value for customers.

More growth equals more jobs

In many industries, growth has become synonymous with an expansion in hiring. Business leaders exacerbate this misconception by measuring their “status” by the number of the people working under them. However, as the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reports, “work that took 1,000 people in 1950 now requires only 170 people.”

Growth-focused companies concentrate on productivity relative to revenue growth, rather than headcount, to determine their competitive advantages and the long-term sustainability of their enterprises.

Growth is tactical

Many companies view their growth exclusively as a function of their marketing mix and sales force. Unfortunately, marketing campaigns and sales activities are inherently tactical and designed to deliver short-term results.

Growth-focused companies also focus on improving long-term growth prospects by creating highly differentiated customer value propositions and pursuing first-mover advantages. This approach takes companies from tactically fulfilling demand to strategically creating the new demand that leads to high growth.

Growth is a “black art”

With well-known stories about Silicon Valley startups and breakthrough companies going from dorm rooms to oversubscribed IPOs, high-growth can be easily viewed as a pop culture phenomenon rooted in some sort of “black art.”

In practice, regardless of the size, growth-focused companies go through an entrepreneurial thought process similar to that of a startup. This often involves using outside-in observation to formulate a divergent view of the future, applying intellectual curiosity to identify areas of opportunity within that future, and executing the ability to convert these hidden opportunities into high growth.

Growth-focused companies dispel the many myths associated with growth by focusing on the factors that really determine business growth:

• Reframe market volatility to uncover hidden sources of growth.
• Reposition tangible and intangible assets to improve future growth prospects.
• Renew products, services, and experiences to create unique sources of value and differentiation.
• Realign the competitive landscape by strategically changing the basis of competition.
• Reinvent business models to create structural competitive advantages.

Left unchecked, the many myths associated with business growth can be paralyzing. Fortunately, individual companies can take a different approach by formulating their own views and taking preemptive action to achieve and sustain business growth.

Wayne Simmons and Keary Crawford are the founders of The Growth Strategy Co. From their research, writing and experiences as successful serial entrepreneurs, in the spring of 2013, they will be launching GrowthCloud, an enterprise SaaS platform for business growth. For more strategies to achieve sustainable business growth, read their book “GrowthThinking: Building the New Growth Enterprise”.

Top growth myths image via Shutterstock

Popular travel advice and booking site TripAdvisor has acquired luxury travel site Jetsetter from Gilt Groupe, the companies announced today.

TripAdvisor did not reveal the price, but Gilt has been reportedly shopping around Jetsetter for $30 million to $50 million since late last year. Gilt Groupe struggled a bit in 2012 and eventually hired Citigroup executive Michelle Peluso to lead the company last December to help get back on track. One of her moves apparently was to finish selling off Jetsetter.

“In a short span of time, Jetsetter has emerged as a premier player in the travel space, and we are proud of what the team has accomplished,” Peluso said in a statement.

TripAdvisor cofounder and CEO Steve Kaufer said Jetsetter will help the company reach out to customers interested in a members-only private-sale experience.

“Jetsetter is an outstanding brand, and I am absolutely delighted to welcome the Jetsetter team to the TripAdvisor family,” Kaufer said in a statement. “With Jetsetter and our own SniqueAway brand, we now have two leading travel private-sale sites under one roof. We are excited by the opportunities this provides to continually help drive amazing value for our travelers staying at some of the world’s most highly-rated hotels.”

Airplane sitting on mouse via Kinetic Imagery/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You can write off the latest rumor about a potential suitor for the popular messaging app WhatsApp.

The company’s business development head, Neeraj Arora, confirmed to AllThingsD last night that WhatsApp isn’t in sales talks with Google. A report from Sunday claimed that Google was willing to pay $1 billion for WhatsApp, but that was based on statements from a single anonymous source.

Arora’s statements don’t rule out an eventual deal with Google — especially if Facebook starts negotiating an acquisition of WhatsApp, something that’s been rumored in the past. There’s no doubt that WhatsApp is one of the hottest apps right now, given that it’s the fifth highest revenue earner on the iTunes App Store and seventh on Google Play.

Facebook is still being threatened by messaging apps, so it makes sense for it to acquire WhatsApp or one of its competitors (like Kik or SnapChat). The social network already acquired messaging app Beluga a few years ago, but it looks like that deal was mostly for engineers to build out Facebook’s own messaging platform. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook is eyeing WhatsApp as well just to snap up its users (said to be over 100 million) and fast growth.

After all, Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram before it even had a revenue model. On paper, at least, WhatsApp seems far more valuable.

Networking giant Cisco has agreed to acquire femtocell and small cell manufacturer Ubiquisys for $310 million in a nearly all-cash deal, the company announced today.

Ubiquisys sells various femtocells and small cells that help boost 3G and LTE reception in residential and business buildings, so it will help Cisco make further inroads with mobile carriers, consumers, and enterprises. The company believes that the Ubiquisys buy will complement its recent purchases of mobile-focused startups BroadHop and Intucell.

“Cisco is ‘doubling down’ on its small cell business to accelerate strong momentum and growth in the mobility market,” Cisco SVP Kelly Ahuja said in a statement. “By acquiring Ubiquisys, we are expanding on our current mobility leadership and our end-to-end product portfolio, which includes integrated, licensed, and unlicensed small cell solutions that are tightly coupled with SON, backhaul, and the mobile packet core. For service providers, Ubiquisys supports cost effective coverage and capacity that delivers a differentiated customer experience.”

The company will offer retention-based incentives to acquire Ubiquisys’ employees and operations. Ubiquisys employees will be integrated into the Cisco Service Provider Mobility unit.

Cisco expects the deal will close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2013.

Top photo via Ubiquisys

OMGPOP founder and Zynga New York GM Dan Porter is out at Zynga. He’ll be replaced by VP of mobile games Sean Kelly. More to come.

— Betabeat (@betabeat) April 2, 2013

At the time of Zynga’s acquisition, OMGPOP had 20.5 million daily active users and 37 million installs, and was the most-tweeted game ever. Of course, since, Zynga stock has cratered, OMGPOP’s chief revenue officer left, and the hits have not been fast and furious.

Zynga COO David Ko confirmed the departure in an email to VentureBeat, saying:

“Developing and launching games is a team effort, and we’re proud of the great work the Zynga New York team has done with Draw Something 2.

Our follow up to the original hit is even more social and engaging, and we’re excited to get it into the hands of our players globally.  We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors.

We’re proud to see talent like Sean Kelly take a bigger leadership role as the Head of our New York studio and lead the team to the global launch of Draw Something 2.”

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Intel is hatching plans to acquire Israeli gesture recognition and tracking technology firm Omek Interactive, three people close to the matter said.

Competitors Qualcomm and Samsung are also considering making an offer — although one source said that a bidding war for Omek is unlikely.

For these companies, gesture control technology is attractive as it offers a way to simplify increasingly sophisticated devices, draw customers to cool sci-fi-like devices, and chew up a lot of computing power that can be produced by their future chips.

“I know that Qualcomm and Samsung are in for natural user interface and biometrics,” said Motti Vaknin, a partner at Israeli venture firm Cedar Fund. By “in,” he refers to partnership, investment, and acquisition opportunities. Intel is currently partnered with competing startup SoftKinetic, and its investment arm Intel Ventures led Omek’s first round of funding.

In July 2011, Omek — with its gesture tracking and recognition technology — raised $7 million. A spokesperson from Intel Capital declined to comment on the acquisition talks.

Omek needed to find another round of financing, so the timing on the bidding isn’t surprising, according to one source familiar with the matter.

VentureBeat also reached out to Omek Interactive. CEO Janine Kutliroff said, “Omek is always having conversations of a strategic or financial nature. We never comment on rumors in the marketplace.”

Jim Moore, the founder of technology M&A firm J Moore Partners, said the intellectual property would be an asset to buyers. “In this case, using depth of field camera data for gesture input will allow people to control their computers without touching them,” he said. He continued, “It is [the] early days for this technology as the application builders will need to build this into their interface and functionality. But the possibilities are enormous.”

The race for ‘perceptual computing’

The race to pick up the technology reveals the hype and reality around cool new technologies that cross multiple markets. Gesture controls have been hot in games since Nintendo debuted the Wii motion-sensing game console in 2006. The Japanese company sold more than 100 million systems, beating out Microsoft and Sony, who were taken by surprise by the popularity of the new ways to control games.

Microsoft bought several companies in response and debuted its rival technology, Kinect, with great success in 2010. Sony followed, less successfully, with its PlayStation Move controller. But it continues to invest in its EyeToy camera-based technology. Microsoft clearly tried to lock up the intellectual property for motion-sensing technology, but it still bought commercial chips from PrimeSense when it shipped Kinect.

While the technologies succeeded in the game market, players cried out for better gesture recognition. Kinect couldn’t detect movements that were too close to it or too far away. A distance of about 10 feet is the sweet spot. Newer technologies can detect subtle finger movements and motions that are inches away from the screen. Intel is particularly interested in such technology for the PC.

As the world’s biggest chip maker, Intel’s focused on “perceptual computing,” or technologies for controlling a computer or tablet that include voice recognition, face recognition, eye-tracking, and motion sensing. Qualcomm and Samsung, likewise, also want to bring such technologies to their mobile markets.

Along the way, the hype cycle has grown as companies try to recapture the experience that Tom Cruise demonstrated with a gesture-controlled computer in the sci-fi film Minority Report. But consumers are likely to reject technologies that fall far short of this target. Omek’s early technology fits into this category, and marketers are still searching for the ideal markets for gesture-based controls.

Omek’s earlier focus was doing full-body motion-tracking systems, dubbed Beckon, that competed with Kinect. The idea was to enable gesture controls for movies or music playback, as Microsoft’s Kinect can also now do. But there wasn’t much of a market beyond Kinect.

PrimeSense showed new 3D cameras at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. These cameras featured much reduced costs so that the gesture controls could be taken into new markets such as tracking goods on retail shelves. Qualcomm has acquired its own technology for gesture control as well.

Now Omek is focused on a technology that it calls Grasp, which is the recognition of small finger movements at closer range. Omek is working with various Intel divisions on that technology, which could be part of the larger perceptual computing offering. In software, Omek’s rivals include Softkinetic, Pointgrab, and Eyesight. The latter use 2D webcams, rather than the more costly 3D space cameras.

Gestigon and LeapMotion are competitors in hand-movement recognition.

Check out the video below for a demonstration of Omek’s close-range gesture recognition tech.

This story is developing. We will update it as we learn more. 

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Apparently today is a good day to buy. Following acquisitions announcements by Yahoo and Oracle, Cisco is announcing that it has agreed to buy cloud services management business SolveDirect, the company said today.

Cisco has said it considers acquisitions a big part of its strategy to innovate, and in January it plunked down $475 million to buy self-optimizing network startup Intucell. SolveDirect will help with Cisco’s goal of giving enterprise companies tools to streamline data and workflows across unified networks.

“SolveDirect’s cloud-based solutions offer enterprises and service providers a flexible way to integrate with service partners and automate sharing of processes, data, and workflows in real-time by eliminating manual practices and bottlenecks, driving significant operational efficiencies,” Hilton Romanski, head of corporate business development at Cisco, said in a blog post announcing the deal. “SolveDirect’s capabilities will enable Cisco to extend our portfolio of smart and connected IT services to our global ecosystem of customers, partners, and resellers.”

The Vienna, Austria-based SolveDirect team will join the Cisco Services group, which is led by Cisco SVP Mala Anand.

Cisco did not reveal the price it has agreed to pay for SolveDirect, and it expects the deal will close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2013.

Cloud services photo via Stokkete/Shutterstock

Showing its intent to get cozy with wireless carriers, Oracle has agreed to acquire Tekelec, a provider of network signaling, subscriber data management, and policy control, the company announced today.

Tekelec’s software is used to better control wireless network devices and to manage customer data. It is in use by 300 service providers in over 100 countries. Oracle believes Tekelec’s offerings will enhance its “support systems, service delivery platforms, and business support systems.”

Oracle expects to add Tekelec’s services to the capabilities of networking technology company Acme Packet — which it agreed to acquire in February for $2.1 billion — and it will join the Oracle Communications unit of Oracle.

“As connected devices and applications become ubiquitous, intelligent network and service control technologies are required to enable service providers to efficiently deploy all-IP networks, and deliver and monetize innovative communication services,” Bhaskar Gorti, SVP and GM of Oracle Communications, said in a statement. “The combination of Oracle and Tekelec will provide service providers with the most complete solution to manage their businesses across customer engagement, business and network operations, service delivery, and end-user applications.”

The Tekelec deal is part of an aggressive acquisition spree that Oracle has pursued for the past year and a half. Two weeks ago, Oracle agreed to buy cloud management software business Nimbula. In February, Oracle announced its intent to buy Acme Packet for $2.1 billion. And in 2012, Oracle announced agreements to purchase 11 companies, including high-profile buys of Taleo, Eloqua, Vitrue, and Skire.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison photo via Oracle PR/Flickr