Darren Davidson, revolutionmagazine.com 14-Sep-09 LONDON - Nokia has acquired the micro social networking site, Plum, which specialises in serving groups such as families and neighbourhood communities as it eyes up a bigger slice of the mobile social network market.
The Boston-based social network, which employs 10 people, will become part of Nokia's Social Location service unit. The privately held company also has an office in San Francisco and has applications available for Facebook, Twitter, and iPhone.
Plum was co-founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneur Hans Peter Brndmo and engineer Margaret Olsen originally as a social-bookmarking site, but has since developed into a social networking site serving neighbourhood communities and schools.
Nokia has been beefing up its social media expertise for some time. In 2008, the company acquired Berlin-based Plazes, the location-based social network.
Plazes lets friends update each other about what they are doing when and where, resulting in a Twitter-like activity stream but with integrated geo-tagging.
Anxious to capture a share of the increasing number of people accessing social networks through their mobile phones, Nokia also recently introduced a Lifecasting service that integrates its phones with Facebook.
Separately, Nokia today unveiled the Nokia 7005, a twist phone that swivels open to reveal a full qwerty keypad to enable users to browser the internet and compose texts with more ease.