So here’s the deal. In an Under the Radar event conducted by Michael Arrington with Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive, announced that after their couple of acquisitions last year (including MySpace), they’ve recently bought another company. He wouldn’t say which company it was, but gave a clue as to it’s once of the 32 companies that presented at the event.
Now, when someone says something like this, there’s no doubt it’s going to trigger a guessing game in the blogosphere. Here’s what some people have guessed as to which it might be:
- Michael Arrington (at the event) – Riya
- John Battelle – SimplyHired, Eurekster
- Om Malik – No guess; confirms its a “smallish” company
- Dan Farber (and others) – Skobee, Meetro, Flock, Dogster, YouTube, Facebook
- Jason Calacanis (December 2005; Predictions of the year) – CNET [doesn't qualify Web 2.0, but still interesting]
- Nik Cubrilovic – Technorati, Wink, Sphere
As you can see, there’s a big range of guesses here, but if we were to narrow it down, here’s the list of the 31 companies (excluding Tagged which was confirmed not acquired) by Michael Arrington:
Even though my guess is as good as any, judging by Fox’s style of acquisitions, I have a strong feeling that it might be Dogster, BubbleShare or even something like Skobee. The reason I say this is because these startups have a few things in common that Fox Interactive, as seen from past acquisitions, tends to go for:
- Social — a biggie. I know how much they like social. This is why no one has guessed something like Box.net.
- Reachable to Critical Mass — They like to make their products reach critical mass, and all these are compatible.
- New & Small — obviously, clues suggest that the company it’s acquired is “smallish” and Web 2.0. Well, there you go.
I’m not sure when they’ll announce it, but I am looking forward to it.
