Nokia buys Twango social media site

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 July 2007 09:54

IT Industry - Strategy

Nokia has acquired "substantially all assets" of social media service Twango.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Twango provides a simple means of uploading and sharing photos, videos and other media files (in more than 100 file formats) to and from computers and mobile phones.

There is currently no charge for using Twango. There is unlimited storage (with a maximum of 100M per item), though uploads are capped at 250M per month.

"The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks - at anytime, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive vice president and general manager, multimedia.

The deal puts Nokia into competition with services such as Flickr and YouTube, although Twango is particularly suited to mobile phone users.

The service also provides an alternative to sending large files by email. Instead, they can be uploaded to Twango which can automatically email the intended recipients with a lightweight preview of the document along with a link to the full version if they choose to download it.

Twango's headcount is set to expand under Nokia's ownership. "As a result of this acquisition, we will aggressively build out our team in the Seattle area," said Twango co-founder, Serena Glover.