All Things D is reporting that professional social network powerhouse, LinkedIn, will be buying contact start-up Rapportive. The deal isn’t official (yet) and there’s nothing on either Rapportive or LinkedIn’s blog, but seems there are sources saying that it will happen. Not wanting to comment on the validity of this rumor, I wanted to instead focus on the fact that this would be a great deal in the making for both companies – should this actually happen, that is.

In case you’re not familiar with Rapportive, it’s a service that integrates inside Gmail to provide you helpful information about your contacts right inside your inbox. So if you’re crafting an email to a business colleague, that contact’s information and social graph (as long as it’s public) will be displayed right on the screen where you might normally see Google ads being displayed. This is especially helpful since you’re going to get to apply some more context to your emails to help make it more personal. Since its founding in 2010 by Rahul Vohra, Martin Kleppmann and Sam Stokes, the goal of the service was to allow people to immediately see what people look like (using social media avatars), where they’re based, and they do. And just like the name implies, the service is meant to help people establish a rapport that can lead to more conversations, relationships, and success. There’s no doubt that Rapportive has been successful in this area as over 20 million lookups are being done through their system every month!

So why the sudden interest by LinkedIn? Since LinkedIn is the 800 pound gorilla in the professional social network scene, it makes sense that creating some sort of rapport is essential to getting any business done. Whether you want to connect with a potential business partner, looking to hire someone, or even want to be the one that’s hired, a Rapportive-LinkedIn marriage would be beneficial for the end user. Since Rapportive is right now available on Gmail, one might wonder about it’s limited nature and how good it will be in the long-term. In a report by Return Path, at the end of 2010, Gmail had over 193 million users – granted it’s way less than Yahoo! and Hotmail, but it’s picking up steam at a much faster rate than the other two. In 2011, Comscore estimated it at 260 million users, meaning that it’s drastically catching up to the email leaders. So eventually in the near future, Gmail will be the dominate leader in email service and with Rapportive’s integration, LinkedIn will have a great opportunity to extend professional profiles further out there.

Even ReadWriteWeb agrees that LinkedIn and Rapportive would be a match made in heaven. And with LinkedIn’s last acquisition of business card scanning technology Cardmunch, LinkedIn would be able to bolster its offering and create a warehouse of professional contact information. I’ve always wanted to find a way to take all the business cards that I get from conferences and events and mesh them into a contact relationship management system and have it all linked to a professional bio that is updated and associated with my email address book so all I have to do is type in that email address: john@johndoe.com and find out how I know him, how things have been since we last talked, and make the email more meaningful. No longer will I need to waste unnecessary emails chit-chatting…it can all be personal again.

Jon Mitchell from ReadWriteWeb probably puts its best:

LinkedIn is already the go-to network for work contacts. It’s the most comprehensive professional profile most people have. Plus, it’s already openly making moves to be a more extensible service, bringing its human resources know-how to other sites that need it.

Ideally, it would be a great move for both teams and the hope is that this isn’t one of Silicon Valley’s most famous “acqui-hires” where they go for just the talent and not the technology. It is definitely a compatible service and will be a boon for people using LinkedIn.

Photo Credit: “Don’t you come a step closer” by Ed Yourdon/Flickr

In a bid to help increase their reach and add more significance to their metrics, influence measurement service Klout purchased the mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. The exact terms aren’t being disclosed, but according to Klout’s blog, they see this acquisition as an additional way for them to build an amazing local-mobile app  and will help make Klout useful and accessible no matter where people are.

If you’re not familiar with Blockboard, it’s a neighborhood app that allows the community to really become a virtual community. It’ll allow your neighbors to chat with you and others to talk about issues plaguing the community like potholes, vandalism, graffiti, crime, observations, and even converse with one another — almost like a private community Facebook. But surely this private community Facebook model fits into Klout’s metric platform, right? Well…it doesn’t seem like it. In a post on TechCrunch, writer Leena Rao states that Klout will use the technology and the team to invest in local and mobile product efforts. In looking at the deal, it appears that Blockboard was an “acqui-hire” and should be a good one if the local and mobile strategy pays off. For now, people who are checking their Klout score only knows what their scores are from a global perspective — there’s no localization to help advertisers and businesses figure out what a customer’s influence is within a specific region, county, or city.

But what’s the deal with Klout wanting to go mobile? Isn’t the site already mobile? No, it’s mobile-friendly…you just have to go to their site and view your profile and sign in through the browser and there’s your score. What Blockboard brought to the table is something that Liz Gannes from All Things D remarked in her post when talking about their authentication: the first time someone uses Blocboard’s iPhone app, it validates via GPS that they are located in a particular neighborhood. So now, your Klout score can let you size up your friends and whoever you’re with, all depending on where your phone is. For example, if you happened to be at the Super Bowl last Sunday and part of the collective group tweeting away, the NFL could use Klout to determine who is the most influential tweeter there and give them a spontaneous perk and the service would know you’re there based off of your phone GPS.  Might seem a bit unrealistic, but who knows what mobile opens up for the service. Whether this localization will allow brands to view people based on more filtered Klout scores (e.g., if you’re influential about technology, photography, and sports–what are your individual scores for each of these topics?). This would help with better targeting by brands and advertisers.

The acquisition of Blockboard is the latest string of strong news by Klout. In December, they topped over 10 billion API calls, have more than 4,000 API partners, and indexed over 100 million profiles. With strong funding and their recent round of $30 million from Kleiner Perkins and more, what lies ahead for Klout?

You can read Blockboard’s post about the acquisition here and Klout’s statement here.

Photo Credit: Business handshake by acerin/sxc.hu

Yahoo has announced its plans to purchase Associated Content, with hopes to boost its content creation, reports BusinessWeek. Ultimately this may be a good move for Yahoo, particularly as it looks to expand on its portal, content delivery and the generation of revenue around these mechanisms. As much trouble as Yahoo has faced over the past few years, it’s ability to deliver content and create a relatively easy way to communicate around that content has remained intact.

Looking to revive interest in advertisers, Yahoo’s upcoming acquisition of Associated Content means that the web company will be able to better target readers with personalized content recommendations combined with custom delivery methods. It’s a great bundle for advertisements to be wrapped in, especially as Yahoo and other portal systems look to increase the ways in which they reach out to consumers.

The growing interest in personalized web information is partly due to the growing mobile industry, which has re-purposed much of the web for better use while on the go. This is wonderful for marketers, as it enables better targeting for ads. As an extension of what Yahoo has already been doing on the web and mobile fronts for years now, anything added to the process will be a perk that both Yahoo and Associated Content can take advantage of.

Which is where the Associated Content’s format comes into play. As a large freelance community, Associated Content represents a new business format for creating, sharing and distributing content across web channels. A concept that has been slowly gaining traction and integration points with traditional news delivery methods can now be leverage for Yahoo’s purposes.

From advertising to increased content available on its site, there is a great deal that Yahoo can do in order to make good use of its latest addition to its family. As Yahoo still struggles to regain top spots for search and advertising, the buying of Associated Content will help the company better compete with AOL and Demand Media, both of which are vying for similar positions when it comes to making the most of an existing web portal service.

A platform on top of a platform? Seems to have worked out well for Labpixies, the app development firm that was recently acquired by Google. The deal suggests Google’s desired expansion for apps to run on its Android platform, which has staked its claim in the mobile realm and is moving beyond to include other consumer electronic devices. As Google continues to push Android, the need for apps running on the platform continues to grow as well.

Giving the app market a bit of a kick start, Labpixies was acquired in order to incorporate more casual games into options for users. This is a welcome change, as gaming on the Android platform has been relatively dismal, especially when compared to Apple’s mobile platform for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, or even when compared to Facebook.

Labpixies uses Google’s OpenSocial platform, meaning its apps will run on Facebook and other places where widgets and OpenSocial apps are supported. This gives Google a multi-pronged approach to maintaining a widespread presence, even if it can’t own all the aspects of that presence across the board.

This is an important perspective for Google to have, as it looks to control a major portion of its consumer data. Given Google’s ongoing move into industries that are new to the company, Google leverages its search tools for individual consumer benefits. While that has given Google a wealth of opportunities, it’s also given the company plenty of chances to toy around with various aspects of several industries.

The mobile industry looks to be very promising, and in Google’s desire to appeal to consumers, apps have become an ideal way in which to do so. Using Labpixies as a part of this initiative will also encourage other developers and publishers to get more involved with the android platform as well.

Of course, there are many other things to address before Android becomes the top platform for developers and consumers, particularly as its open source status and frequent updates means a less stable environment than Apple’s for building mobile apps. This appears to be a step in the right direction for Google.

Google has acquired Picnik, the Seattle-based photo-editing app that lives in the cloud. I always sort of thought of Picnik as Photoshop Elements that I could access from anywhere.

I’m a bit surprised by this news, as I feel like I’ve seen Picnik everywhere in the last year, including BlogHer and CES. In fact, one of those recyclable shopping bags with a big Picnik logo is sitting right next to me.

My first thought when I heard Picnik was acquired by Google was, “What about Yahoo?”  Picnik is integrated into Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing app, where it offers online photo editing inside the Flickr wrapper. I use it all the time, actually. So this is interesting cross-contamination between Google and Yahoo. Obviously Google is hoping to really ramp up Picasa, and as Picasa shares so seamlessly with the other Google tools, this makes sense. If everyone I know (and several years worth of photos) wasn’t already on Flickr, I’d probably move to Picasa.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Picnik blog post on the matter sounds more happy than sad.

What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.

What does this mean for you Picnikers? Nothing is changing right away, but Picnik now has more potential than ever before. The team that built Picnik from the grass up will continue making advanced and powerful photo-editing easier, more intuitive and more fun, so stay tuned to hear about all the cool new stuff we’re working on.

The Official Google blog also reiterates that nothing is changing. In particular, they address the Yahoo/Flickr question without mentioning it by name, saying that they’ll support “all existing Picnik partners.”

We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

More news from Google this week, as the search engine announced its plans to acquire social search engine Aardvark. The details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, though TechCrunch estimates the purchase amount at $50 million. Google is being rather tight-lipped about its plans for Aardvark as well, saying that the announcement of the two companies having signed papers agreeing to the acquisition is all the information it has to give for the time being.

As a social search engine Aardvark aims to provide fast answers based on your social network connections. The idea of relevancy is also quite important to Ardvark, as the search engine also looks to contextualize the search results so that they are useful as well as sourced from trusted friends and acquaintances. Aardvark does so by setting up a Question and Answer platform through which your social connections are leveraged towards seeking actual answers to questions.

It is this social aspect of Aardvark that could be of interest to Google, especially as the search engine advances towards a more contextual search experience. In improving its service and responding to search tools that are leveraging social networks for providing additional context to queries. Google has added several social features to its existing search, giving optimized options to regular Google users.

Outside of improving the existing Google service for its registered users, the company could also seek a way in which socially driven search results could aid non-registered users. The incorporation of Aardvark could give Google additional data with which to apply to its ever-improving algorithms, even if that isn’t a direct social offering to Google users.

As far as Google’s own social advancements go, the company is responding more aggressively to the trends being put forth by Facebook and Twitter. Combining a social aspect to more and more of Google’s apps is one way in which Google is looking to retain and further engage its users while also improving its search utilities.

Whether or not Aardvark will have anything to do with Google’s plans on this end, time will tell. Until then, we’ll have to sit tight and see what else Google is holding up its sleeve.

Flixter has acquired movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, combining the two movie-oriented services to become one of the largest resources around. Previously a property of IGN, Rotten Tomatoes is now part of a new media family. The acquisition amount has not been revealed, though IGN will retain a minority stake in Rotten Tomatoes.

According to Mashable, there were rumors of Flixter being acquired by IGN, with possibilities around combining Flixter and Rotten Tomatoes under the IGN umbrella. IGN, however, is in the midst of refocusing its efforts on the male, gaming demographic. Perhaps Rotten Tomatoe didn’t quite fit the bill given IGN’s new direction.

But either way, it appears that Fliter and Rotten Tomatoes were destined to be together. If not under IGN’s umbrella, than under Flixter’s. The user-generated search engine for movies has gained traction as a resource and a personalized recommendation service, putting it in a good position to acquire another company that could help its primary cause. To that end, Flixter and Rotten Tomatoes have worked together in the past. Both companies have provided review content through various movie review resources and applications.

The applications, on social networks and mobile devices, are a strong suite for Flixter. The company already has a number of apps for social networks across the major platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Its mobile presence is also growing, with various outlets through which it streams its content. While Rotten Tomatoes and Flixter will remain separately operating websites, the combined reach of the two review sources will span a wide range of users.

It makes sense that Flixter and Rotten Tomatoes would keep separate websites to retain their brand, image and product. The two services still have a great deal they can accomplish cooperatively without having to re-brand one service or another. Cross-promotion between the two services could also prove beneficial, as they appeal to different aspects of a single industry.

The acquisition also reflects Flixter’s desire to grow its reach. For Flixter in particular socially integrated actions and distribution is key to Flixter’s future survival. Having the ability to focus its growth on this arena while utilizing new property Rotten Tomatoes only adds to the overall usefulness of their new combined efforts.

By Julie Blaustein

Kosmix‘s doubles Ping Pong Tournament held at its head quarters in Mountain View last week was quite the event. Seven of their closest neighbors and potential partners were invited along with a team of bloggers that included myself, Julie “Julie B” Blaustein of Bub.blicio.us and Jennifer “Mediaphyter” Leggio of ZDNet. Kosmix takes not only their work seriously but their Ping Pong even more so. Scattered throughout their office are ping pong balls, rackets and previous trophies – a true testament to their ping pong culture. For this special tournament a two foot high, gold topped trophy with ping pongs was awarded to the winners. Each player’s game name such as “The Octopus” and “The Smasher” made it clear how intent they were in their quest to win. In the end, it was the Kosmix team made up of Nikesh “The Wall” Garera and Ankur “Neo” Jain that were the winners! Check out the hilarious Video of the Kosmix Startup Smackdown shot by Carl Brown of Corduroy Media.

The Contenders included the following companies:

Talenthouse: A platform that provides opportunities to the world’s creative community.

Skyfire: Provides a downloadable, free mobile browser that gives you Web browsing like your PC.

TheFind: Finds every product from every store, every coupon, and every review.

Rythm NewMedia: Mobilizes and Monetizes TV Shows.

Polyvore: Mixes & matches products from your favorite stores. You can then shop looks created by the web’s largest fashion community.

Evernote: Saves your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then it allows you to find them all on any computer or device for free!

Meebo: Instant messages everywhere.

And Kosmix: It is a universal guide to the Web that organizes the Internet through a categorization engine into fun magazine-style topic pages to navigate the web using a countless number of sources including YouTube and Wikipedia. Unlike Mahalo that depends on Human Editors, Kosmix relies on Search Algorithms. Recently launched MeeHive creates customized news pages through very fine tuned aggregation. You can customize your own or a specialized version such as found with FailCon’s version.

Photo Credit: Karl Mueller

The Kosmix Ping Pong Tournament and its Team Players Photo Credit: Karl Mueller

Kosmix Founder Anand Rajaraman Guards the Ping Pong Trophy