April 1 joke predicted Nokia purchase of Plum
By Pulkit Sharma

On Sept 11,  Finland-based mobile phone giant Nokia announced that it was buying California-based social networking site Plum Ventures.  Plum is small and has only 10 employees.  Plum allows its members to set up their own social networking sites e.g a family, a sporting club or even a school can set up their own networking site using Plum technology.

Obviously, Nokia is buying building blocks towards its vision of becoming a phone company that meets all the requirements of anyone who uses a cell phone.

A small number of Indian companies are already using Plum. Nokia is the largest phone company in the world and dominates the market in India. So, whatever Nokia does is keenly followed in India.

The news about Nokia buying Plum Ventures took the market by surprise.  Not a single American and/or European journalist had an inkling about the negotiations and purchase.

But the Plum Ventures blog had hinted about possible negotiations in an April 1 posting on its blog. But because it was posted on April Fools Day, it was taken with a pinch of salt.

The Scandinavian people are bound together by their Nordic links, culture and history.  The 5 Scandinavian countries are Denmark, Finland (Nokia HQ), Iceland, Norway and Sweden. They share a common Tourism office in North America.

A techgoss tipster (thanks Mahesh) has written in saying how the Plum Ventures blog had published the following post on April 1, 2009 which predicted how one of the Scandinavian countries may buy Plum. Bit spooky when you read it today

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Norway to acquire Plum in asset sale

San Francisco, California - April 1, 2009 - The kingdom of Norway today announced that it will acquire the social networking company Plum for an undisclosed amount. Plum will join forces with Innovation Norway a state owned company with over seven hundred employees with its head office in Norway’s capital Oslo and with offices in all the Norwegian counties and in over thirty countries.

“While Silicon Valley is the world’s hub for tech IPOs and acquisitions, we realize that it is not often that a country makes this kind of strategic technology acquisition” says Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry Sylvia Brustad. “Norway is in a unique position due to its vast oil and gas reserves and budget surplus. The country has a made a strategic decision to foster technology innovation through strategic investment and acquisitions. Plum is a perfect fit with its founders both having Scandinavian roots, strong Silicon Valley and Boston connections and long track records of innovation and success.”

Plum Groups will be rolled out in Norwegian to every county in the country this fall in order to foster social sharing and collaboration at the grass roots level. Recent reports and criticism in the mainstream media has caused concerns among the Norwegian people and in the government about the broader societal influence of social networking. Plum is attractive due to its focus on privacy and on groups of people who already know each other.

“The Norwegian public were early adopters of the popular Facebook social networking service becoming one of the first places outside the US where Facebook took off” said Hans Peter Brøndmo, co-founder and CEO of Plum. “Norway is killing two birds with one stone with this acquisition. It is offering a more private and family oriented complement to Facebook and it is bringing an innovative social software technology start-up to its home shores”.

Plum will open an office in a new high tech office park in Oslo and Brondmo will move back to Norway and lead Plum from the Oslo office. Margaret Olson, Plum’s CTO and co-founder will spend twenty five percent of her time in Plum’s new headquarters and will lead development teams in Boston, Massachusetts and Oslo, Norway.

While Iceland has been getting a lot of attention recently as a possibly hub for cloud based computing due to its economic woes and green energy sources, Norway has been overlooked in this regard. Given it’s long history as a source of clean, hydroelectric power and cool weather, Norway is a perfect location for cloud based computing. Plum’s cloud based web service will be transitioned from Amazon Web Services to a new Norwegian eco-friendly cloud computing initiative, also sponsored by Innovation Norway, over the next two years.

For existing Plum customers and users there will be no change. This acquisition gives Plum a solid base to continue its innovation and continuing development on its existing product roadmap with a focus on online and mobile social networking for groups.

For more information or questions, please contact Innovation Norway at post@innovasjonnorge.no and Plum at info@plum.com
 
Published by Hans Peteron April 1, 2009in announcement, company news and news.
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