After Facebook has successfully completed a deal with Instagram, which site will be the next line? And which of the most prominent tech startups launched in the last couple of years or so, are most likely to be in demand for the significant social value that they can bring to the parent company?
We’ve grasped in the previous post, some of the social sites likely to be grabbed up by major players, to consolidate their own user base, reach and value. Spotify and Thisismyjam, couple among them, make it easier to both discover and share your favorite music friends. On the other hand, more and more people are spending time on Pinterest since it’s highly social in nature. Tumblr is a blogging service with which you can well customize every aspect. Here are few other likely ‘takeover candidates’ with solid social presence:
Path
Its USP: Already a popular ‘life-sharing’ app, it’s essentially meant to be rather a personal journal on which like-minded people can choose to capture and retain select moments of their own lives.
Who might be interested in it?: Google
Features of the service
- A recent major change is in the way the nascent service has opted to extend the total number of friends that a user can share on it – now increased to 150 people on one’s account, almost three times bigger than the previous version.
- The core idea of Path is still to retain the ‘highly personal’ experience on the network. To mix in with its social network (Google+) and also as part of the Google Glass project, the search giant would want to acquire it.
StumbleUpon
Who might be interested in it?: Google, Twitter, Apple and Facebook
Its USP: Probably one of the largest, albeit also among the least remarked-on, networks – it helps people find new and interesting content on the Web. StumbleUpon doesn’t face any controversial copyright issues and drives a lot of quality traffic to websites.
Features of the service
- You tell this site-sharing service what you prefer online and it promises to introduce you to some truly informative and insightful text, photos, videos and more that you as a layperson wouldn’t have easily found on your own.
- As you happen to ‘Stumble’ through the boundless Web world, you tell it whether you Dislike or Like the recommendations made by it so that the results can be customized to your needs. The tool shows you pages based on the feedback and what similar Stumblers follow, have Disliked or Liked.
Square
Its USP: It removes one hurdle in at times complex process of payment and allows people to make transfers straight from their phones without any hassle.
Who might be interested in it?: Paypal, Google, and Apple
Features of the service
It’s a handy smartphone add-on, which allows businesses to accept card payments. It’s a company whose founders also include among others Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. And for any of those high-profile potential buyers, it offers them a leg up into the new frontier of mobile-driven payments.
