The Ultimate Guide to Customer Acquisition

via blog.kissmetrics.com

We all need to acquire new customers to make our products and businesses work. Whether there are a few users paying big bucks or thousands visiting your platform for free, how you get and retain customers is what is important.

But ask yourself: are you really ready for more customers? Is your team set up to handle an influx of users? What’s your promotion strategy – inbound marketing or traditional PR? This extensive guide will walk you through what user acquisition is and how to execute a plan.

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Ancestry.com Acquired in a $1.6 Billion Deal

via mashable.com

Genealogy company Ancestry.com has been acquired by an investor group led by European private equity firm Permira for about $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports citing sources familiar with the matter.

Ancestry.com is a profitable company which operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites in the U.S. and abroad, including Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com, ProGenealogists, and Rootsweb.com.

The company has had over 2,000,000 paying subscribers as of June 2012; it expects a 2012 revenue of $473.0 to $480.0 million.

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Is Google's acquisition of Motorola working out?

via digitaltrends.com

Back in May, Google dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The purchase was by far Google’s largest acquisition to date, and a contentious one. By acquiring a mobile handset maker, Google was essentially putting itself in direct competition with Android hardware partners like Samsung, Acer, and HTC. But Google swore Motorola wouldn’t get any special favors, and — according to Google, anyway — the acquisition was more about acquiring Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio than getting into the handset business. Google wanted to make it far more difficult for a company like Apple or Microsoft to claim Android infringed on its intellectual property. If they did, Google could bring Motorola’s patent portfolio to bear.

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Tech acquisitions so far in 2012

via techi.com

Big fish eat little fish. It’s the way of the business world. Sometimes, it’s a welcomed meal for the “eaten” when a larger company gives them a lot of money to get their assets and often their people as well such as with Microsoft’s purchase of Yammer. For others, it’s not quite as welcome. In the case of Digg, the company passed on a deal worth $80 million in 2011 only to be scrapped for parts by 3 bigger fish for a total of $16 million (and that number is a bit generous).

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Facebook Is About To Make One Of Its Largest Acquisitions Ever

via businessinsider.com

Facebook is working on a big deal to acquire Face.com, according to multiple reports.

The estimated buy price is between $80 and $100 million, but TechCrunch's sources peg it at the latter.

That would make Face.com one of Facebook's largest acquisitions yet. It spent about $1 billion on Instagram in cash and stock. In 2009 Facebook spent $50 million on FriendFeed but the deal actually ended up being worth ~$330 million when Facebook's valuation skyrocketed.

Face.com is a face recognition technology that's already integrated with Facebook. It can auto-tag friends in photos uploaded by users, either one at a time or by entire albums. It can guess a user's age, gender and even mood. Face.com has a mobile API and an app called KLIK that uses a camera to auto tag Facebook photos.

Face.com has only raised $5.3 million to date, so the 9-figure exit would be a big win for founders Eden Shochat, Gil Hirsch, Yaniv Taigman and Moti Shniberg, and investors Yandex and Rhodium. It was founded in Israel in 2007.

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Dell Thinks A $1.25 Billion Acquisition Too Small To Report

via businessinsider.com

Dell today acquired SonicWall for terms it wouldn't disclose. However, the New York Times says the deal cost Dell $1.25 billion.

Apparently Dell feels $1.25 billion isn't a material number its investors need to be bothered over.

A spokesperson for Dell told Business Insider that Dell never reports the terms on acquisitions of private companies and that it would not confirm or deny the $1.25 billion amount.

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