LinkedIn continued its mini acquisition spree, grabbing Gmail contact-management service Rapportive for an undisclosed sum.
Professional
social network LinkedIn (NASDAQ:LNKD) has acquired startup
Rapportive,
which makes a browser plug-in that injects contact information from social networks
such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and into Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Gmail
application.
Rapportive
displays Twitter tweets and other status updates in a toolbar alongside Gmail.
The app, which LinkedIn will maintain, is similar to software offered by Xobni,
Google's People Widget for Gmail and other lightweight apps that are attempting
to make users' in-boxes more social.
These
companies were founded on the premise that Microsoft's Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo
Mail don't provide enough intelligence about users' personal and professional
contacts to be truly useful in boosting social engagement.
Financial
terms of LinkedIn's deal for Rapportive were not disclosed.
AllthingsDigital, which broke the news, said
the deals costs in the low teens of millions of dollars.
It isn't yet
clear how LinkedIn will leverage Rapportive's technology and talent.
Rapportive CEO Rahul Vohra wrote in a bubbly blog post
that he hitched his company's wagon to LinkedIn because both care about their
users first and foremost.
LinkedIn
supplied this complimentary comment after Rapportive CEO announced the deal on
his company's blog:
"We are
always on the lookout for companies with the talent, technology or services
that have the potential to accelerate our product road map. Rapportive does a
great job at delivering relevant information in a platform that is universally
used by professionals€”email. It's very much in line with LinkedIn's mission to
make professionals more productive and successful in their careers."
LinkedIn has
proven successful enough in that regard. Through a combination of advertising
and selling hiring solutions to professional recruiters, the company went
public last May. LinkedIn's opening IPO price of $83
surprised the high-tech world.
Earlier this
month, the company
reported fourth-quarter income and revenue that beat Wall
Street estimates. Net income was $6.9 million and revenue came in at
$167.7 million, more than doubling from $81.7 million in the same period in
2010.
The Rapportive
deal isn't the first time LinkedIn has dipped its toe in the contact management
pool.
The company acquired Connected for real-time
contact management last October.
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