Business

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and startups. Previously, he was a staff technology writer at Adweek, worked as a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and was also a reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... ? Learn More Just as the tech press was busy talking about the first academic paper on acqui-hires, another acqui-hire deal closed, with online ad company AppNexus acquiring fantasy sports startup Fantuition. Co-founder and CEO Pat McCarthy announced the deal in a blog post that also recounts some of Fantuition’s history and discusses McCarthy’s feelings about being acqui-hired (or, as he spells it, “acqhired”, because no one can agree on the spelling of this awkward, awkward word) — in other words, getting acquired by another company just so that they can hire your team, while your product gets shut down. McCarthy says t...

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked for GigaOM, where she reported on startups and Silicon Valley. Earlier, Colleen reported for Mergermarket, an online newswire and subsidiary of the Financial Times focused on M&A. Before that, she was a contributing editor for Electronic News, the semiconductor industry trade newsletter. Colleen... ? Learn More Facebook has become known for making a good number of talent-focused startup acquisitions, aka acqui-hires — but the cost of each deal is normally kept under wraps. In a regulatory quarterly filing the company made today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though, it put an aggregate pricetag on all those “non-material” sized deals it made in the first half of this year: $24 million. Here’s the wording from the document: “During the six months ended June 30, 2012, we completed business acquisitions for total consideration of $24 million. These acquisitions wer...

Facebook just acquired Acrylic Software, a Vancouver, CA-based startup that developed two paid desktop and mobile apps: Pulp, a personalized newspaper app for Mac ($9.99) and iPad, and Wallet, an app that lets you “sync, store and secure your digital life” for Mac and iOS. Both of these apps got a good amount of press when they launched, but for the most part, the company has flown under the radar. Acrylic Software’s founder Dustin MacDonald says that Facebook did not acquire the company’s apps though and that Wallet and Pulp “will continue to remain available for download and purchase in their current form.” The team will move to San Francisco. This announcement comes just a week after Facebook also acquired read-it-later service Spool. It’s not clear what exactly the Acrylic team will focus on at Facebook, but chances are the team will work on mobile-related products – an area Facebook could indeed use some help. With Wallet, Acrylic has a background in encryption and mobile securi...