

GroupMe acquired by Skype - fescue
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/21/skype-to-acquire-year-old-group-messaging-service-groupme/

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caryme
This is really interesting and exciting from Microsoft's perspective. As I
understand it, while a purchase like the Skype purchase waits for approval by
the regulatory bodies, the purchasing company (Microsoft) and company pending
purchase (Skype) have very limited communication.

My guess is that Microsoft had no involvement in this purchase and is
basically winding up with GroupMe as a party favor. Pretty nifty party favor,
if you ask me.

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sahillavingia
For a reported $85M: <http://dthin.gs/owvvqM>

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nivertech
It's like they told Skype just pay us 1% of whatever MSFT paid you ...

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Timothee
I find that interesting from Twilio's perspective: GroupMe was using Twilio to
send SMSs (at least at first, but they didn't have much time to change the
most important part of their service) and Twilio has recently added some VoIP
components (Twilio Client) to their offer, which, even though doesn't compete
directly with Skype, is covering much more bases than Skype is when it comes
to integration in web or mobile apps.

And based on some announced usage numbers from GroupMe a few months ago I
imagine Twilio was/is making good money from them alone…

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caryme
I have to imagine that if Skype does anything with GroupMe at a technical
level, they'll cut Twilio out of the picture. Skype writing checks to Twilio
seems like a temporary situation.

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ttpva
Price? If they got $10M in funding, I assume that they sold for more than 50M?

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vlad99
More like 100M

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joshbert
It's not a guessing game. $85M is the reported price.

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dan_manges
Could Google Huddle have influenced Skype to make this move? Google is clearly
trying to enter the group messaging space and has the infrastructure to
support both text and voice group communication.

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gkoberger
I really hope Skype lets GroupMe continue to operate on it's own, and doesn't
ruin it. It's an awesome service, and lets me keep in touch with my tech-
adverse friends from back home. Some people use AIM, some use Facebook, some
use email, some use MSN, some use BBM -- but everyone has texting.

The beauty is the simplicity. On vacation with some friends? Spin up a new
groupme for the week. I can't see it remaining this easy if skype starts
taking advantage of "integration points".

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fescue
With Skype itself being acquired by Microsoft, it's hard to imagine GroupMe
remaining a standalone product--or even as elegantly simple as it is now.

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caryme
Even if they do, I have the feeling that the loser in this purchase is Twilio.
I have a hard time imagining Skype or eventually Microsoft paying Twilio to
handle their telephony infrastructure.

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omfut
Skype already has its own infrastructure to support Voice and SMS. Iam pretty
sure twilio will be out of the picture the moment the deals is done.

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jackowayed
Well they will have to transfer over the phone numbers so they don't break
backward compatibility. I don't quite know how that works with VoIP providers,
but I think it's doable. Might slow things down a bit though.

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dhughes
I'm going to need an aggregator for my social aggregators between Huddle,
GroupMe, Social Hub, Buzz, Foursquare, IM and SMS.

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dave1619
Congrats to the GroupMe team. I had a chance to meet a couple of them a while
ago and they were really nice guys. Well-deserved.

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kin
I'm curious what people generally prefer between group SMS and group data
messaging?

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EGreg
Wow. I was there. And I am still bootstrapping my company. Well we got seed
money but a lot of it was still bootstrapped.

Yet I feel we have way bigger ambitions... I wonder sometimes if raising
investment sooner was better

