Bubbleshare Snapped up by Kaboose

Well, it turns out the buyer of Bubbleshare isn’t News Corp. Instead, it’s Toronto-based Kaboose Inc., which is buying the photo-sharing service for $2.25-million to strengthen it’s position as “the biggest independent, family-focused online media company in North America”. (That’s a real mouthful, eh!).
Anyway, the deal will see Bubbleshare CEO and his team join Kaboose, which is looking to develop its community and social networking activities. It’s a small transaction but can only be seen as a successful for Lai, who made its first entrepreneurial splash when he and his partners sold MyDesktop to JupiterMedia in 1999. Hopefully, it will also provide Canada’s Web 2.0 community with some inspiration/encouragement that there are rewards if you take the plunge. I’ve got a lot of respect for Lai but the reality was Bubbleshare was more a feature than a business so it’s future hinged on a buy-out. At the end of the day, he and Bubbleshare did well.
The question you have to ask is whether News Corp.’s apparent $5-million offer for Bubbleshare was pulled off the table when details of the deal were leaked.
Under the terms of the transaction, Kaboose will buy BubbleLabs Inc. for $2.25 million with another $750,000 on the table based on an earn-out.

Technorati Tags: M&A, Web 2.0