Mozilla buys ‘read-it-later’ service Pocket

Mozilla, the team behind the Firefox web browser, has made its first acquisition. The company has bought Pocket, a read-it-later service, for an undisclosed amount. Pocket will operate as an independent subsidiary of Mozilla and is said to help bring the company to more mobile devices. It’s not exactly clear how that will help but Pocket does bring with it 10 million monthly active users and new potential businesses for Mozilla, such as advertising, analytics for publishers, and premium subscription service. The acquisition is like a homecoming for Pocket as it started out as a Firefox add-on.

Pocket previously rejected an offer from Evernote after it became apparent to them that their service would just be a feature inside the bigger company’s app. But it seems with Mozilla, they can remain a standalone service. According to Mozilla, over time Pocket can help them with its “content graph” initiative, which is the company’s effort to create a recommendation engine for the web and baked into the browser.

Source: Pocket + The Verge

Airbnb acquires Montreal-based luxury vacation rental site

It’s being reported that home rental service Airbnb dropped around US$300 million in cash and stock to buy upscale vacation site Luxury Retreats. Airbnb won’t disclose financial terms of the deal, though. The figures mentioned above were from a report by Bloomberg. Airbnb has over three million homes for rent in over 50,000 cities and has expanded its business bit by bit. In the past year, it started letting travelers book day trips and excursions through the site. Now, they’re moving into the luxury space with this acquisition.

Luxury Retreats has over 4,000 homes in 100 locations around the world. They offer more upscale villas for the affluent crowd and include a concierge service. The company will stay in Montreal at the moment and act as a standalone brand but over time their listings will be integrated and highlighted in Airbnb’s own platform.

Source: CNET

Oculus buys eye-tracking company Eye Tribe

It isn’t surprising that Oculus has taken an interest in an eye-tracking technology. This Facebook-backed virtual reality company just purchased Eye Tribe. The Danish startup specializes in creating software developer kits that bring gaze-based controls to mobile devices and PCs. Oculus won’t talk about anything else outside of the acquisition, though. So, we have no word how much the deal cost, what will happen to Eye Tribe’s employees and the company itself after the purchase, or what Oculus plans to do with Eye Tribe’s technology.

However, it is easy to assume what we can expect to show up in the future. Eye Tribe has been working on a foveated rendering for VR, which is meant to boost VR performance by only rendering the part of the simulation the user is directly looking at. With this kind of technology, it’ll help improve immersion, help stop simulator sickness, and reduce performance bottlenecks.

Source: Engadget

Twitter gets new VP of product as it acquires startup Yes

Consumer mobile app startup Yes, Inc. is joining Twitter and with it the company’s CEO, Keith Coleman, is becoming the new vice president of product for the social network. Yes will be shutting down its two mobile apps—wyd, which is for sharing status updates, and Frenzy, which is for making plans with friends. Coleman and six other employees from Yes will be taking on product and design roles at Twitter as part of the agreement.

Coleman has the unenviable task of steering the core Twitter app and service, a spot that has been vacant for the past six months. The core product that has been attributed as being one of the main reasons why the company has struggled to expand its user base. Let’s see what he can do for the social network.

Source: Recode