Path announced this morning that Path 3 is now available, and the focus is the the type of intimate, free-form communication that happens in person. As the private social network says, “There is so much more than words that pass between us. A smile or nod or encouraging gesture – these allow for true connection and understanding.”

To enable that in a more organic — and non-Facebook way — Path has introduced private messaging. Despite the name, it can be used for both one-on-one and one-to-many communication, but the defining characteristic is that it is very free-form. Ye good olde fashioned text or photo-based status update looks almost a little limited in comparison.

A brand new language?

In the new Path, messages can be text or photos (of course) but also voice, location, a cartoon-style sticker or badge that communications your emotions of the moment, a song, a book, a video, your location, or even a movie clip you’ve found online.

In other words, just about anything but the pat on the back.

And a brand-new monetization

One of the new communication channels Path is adding is stickers, kind of a next-gen emoticon.

“These are pieces of art to be used in messaging. They are expressive and fun, and they communicate what words can’t,” Path says.

You get two free “packs” just for being a Path member, but other packs are available as well, at extra cost. Some of my favorites are designed by Hugh McLeod of GapingVoid fame, but stickers from other artists such as David Lanham and Richard Perez are also available. Path didn’t release any pricing information yet.

The new version of Path is available immediately for iPhone, and “coming soon” for Android.

In 2012, 2,357 private technology companies were bought for a combined total of $84 billion, according to a new report from research firm PrivCo. That’s up 22 percent from 2011, but the real surprise is who is doing the acquiring.

Source: PrivCo

Most active buyers for 2012

The most acquisitive companies of 2012, Facebook and Google, each bought 16 companies. Surprisingly, the I’m-not-dead-yet Groupon bought 12, and even more surprisingly, Twitter tied with Cisco, a $112 billion perennial acquirer, with 10 purchases in the year.

Twitter, of course, is still a private company itself.

“Twitter actually buying as many companies last year as giant Cisco — and more than Apple, Oracle, SAP, Hewlett Packard, and other tech giants – that’s a first,” PrivCo chief executive officer Sam Hamadeh said in an email.

PrivCo plans to release its full 400-page report on mergers and acquisitions of private tech companies on Feb. 14. But the research firm gave VentureBeat a sneak peek today.

2012 was the biggest year for private tech company acquisitions since 2009, Hamadeh said. Companies like Facebook and Twitter rose to the top in part due to the phenomenon of “aqui-hiring,” buying a company simply — or mostly — to acquire its employees. In Facebook’s case, PrivCo’s report highlights that a lot of that happened before its May IPO, which of course, was a major carrot to dangle in front of the targeted companies.

The biggest category? Think enterprise.

Software beat out Internet services for the top spot, PrivCo says, with nearly 600 deals. Internet services ranked second with just over 400 deals, followed by communications, networking, and storage with about 300, and consulting with about 150.

The top two categories combined outweighed all the other categories combined:

Source: PrivCo

Top tech sectors for acquisitions – 2012

As per usual, Silicon Valley ranked highest in terms of number of deals, with 329. New York was second with 151, and Chicago ranked third at 81 acquisitions. That’s a surprise, to an extent, but remember that Groupon, which ranked third in terms of number of acquisitions in 2012, is based in Chicago.

In addition, PrivCo says, Chicago is home to Thoma Bravo, which “ranked as the No. 1 most active private-equity firm acquirer of private tech companies last year.”

Average deal volume was $36 million.

photo credit: racineur via photopin cc, PrivCo

Personal.com stands among a growing class of Dropbox competitors. But it’s taking a different course, following that age-old wisdom, “If you can’t beat em, join em.”

Today, the consumer cloud startup announced an integration with both Dropbox and Evernote, and it released a set of new features so users can exchange and store their most private information, like health or insurance records.

The Washington, D.C.-based company has been around since 2009, and it has carved a niche in the market for storing highly sensitive data — both on web and on mobile. It doesn’t hurt that the service is available for free (the company is still in beta). No doubt, it will soon introduce a Dropbox-style freemium model.

Personal.com’s free Android app has been available since November, and the iPhone version was released last week.

The pitch is simple. We need to store a growing amount of personal and professional information: birthdays, bank account numbers, Social Security information, tax records, allergy information, alarm codes, and so on. Wouldn’t it make life easier if you could save all your data — including the private information — in your personal “vault”?

The company has specialized in storage, but its users wanted to share and manage their data, too. As of today, anything that you store on Personal can be shared with a friend, family-member or employee, as long as they’re a registered user.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Green explained how the company stores your most private information securely in the cloud. ”Personal doesn’t store the password to your vault, only you know it, and only you have the ability to decrypt your files and photos,” he said.

No doubt, the Dropbox integration is a means for the company to pickup millions of new users — “it is a great company with a hugely loyal user base,” said Green. Now, you can store your notes, files, and photos in Personal or link to an existing Dropbox account. Files uploaded to Personal’s secure data vault are encrypted for added protection. The benefits of the partnership go both ways – Dropbox has been called out for its frequent privacy glitches.

Other new features include:

• Secure encryption: Your uploaded files will be automatically encrypted through Personal whenever they’re stored and shared.
• Secure sharing: Owners can safely share important notes, files and documents with other registered users, whether it’s a family-member or employee.
• Free data, notes and file storage: Users can securely upload unlimited data and notes, and up to 50MB of files and photos.

Personal picked up $7.6 million in July, 2011 from Grotech Ventures, Revolution, among others.

Mobile security image via Shutterstock

Alibaba Group is raising $3 billion — not to buy back the 40 percent stake Yahoo holds in the parent company, as previously rumored, but to buy back the 27 percent of Alibaba.com stock currently floating around the public market.

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma (pictured above) is attempting to take the company private in order to strengthen his control of the company, Reuters reports today.

The company recently suspended public trading of its stock pending the release of a statement that a company spokesperson said would be price-sensitive.

Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ANZ, DBS Bank, and Mizuho Corporate Bank have each pledged $500 million in loans to facilitate the deal, totaling $3 billion for Alibaba.com to become a private company again.

Currently, parent company Alibaba Group owns 73 percent of Alibaba.com, and Yahoo owns 40 percent of Alibaba Group. Yahoo was reportedly attempting to sell back its stake in Alibaba Group and a couple other Asian web powerhouses, a deal that would have left Yahoo with much-needed focus on domestic products and around $17 billion in cash.

However, those talks fell apart last week. As Yahoo’s board chair Roy Bostock noted in an open letter on the negotiations, “The complexity and unique nature of these transactions is significant. While we continue to devote significant resources to these discussions, we are not in a position at this time to provide further detail or to provide assurance that any transaction will be achieved.”

The Alibaba.com stock buy-back is reportedly unrelated to the Yahoo deal, Reuters’ anonymous sources said.