Techmeme: Another EA Exec Jumps Ship To Zynga; Jeff Karp Joins As Chief Marketing And Revenue Officer (Leena Rao/TechCrunch)

4:45 AM ET, August 22, 2011

Top Items:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Skype To Acquire Year-old Group Messaging Service GroupMe — Skype will acquire group messaging service GroupMe, a service that was born at a hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York in 2010. GroupMe was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci. — The terms of the deal, including price, aren't being disclosed.

Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:

Skype Pays Around $85 Million For GroupMe — Skype has agreed to acquire GroupMe, a company that has developed a way to for a group of people to send messages to each across various smartphone platforms. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft.

Discussion: About Skype and PC Magazine

Ben Popper / Betabeat:

GroupMe Acquired by Skype for More than $50 Million — GroupMe just celebrated their one year anniversary, and founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hetch certainly had something to smile about. A deal in the works for months was just completed, with global VOIP giant Skype acquiring GroupMe for a price we hear is north of $50 million.

Thanks:betabeat

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Why Skype bought GroupMe & Why it isn't enough — Skype, the Internet telephony company that is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft says it is buying a year-old group messaging startup, GroupMe. The price tag according to some estimates is $85 million, though Skype and GroupMe have not yet confirmed the deal terms.

Discussion: The Big Blog and The inneractive Blog

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business — HP acquired Palm at the end of April 2010, for $1.2 billion. HP's CEO was Mark Hurd. — Three months later, in early August, Mark Hurd was forced to resign over that scandal with forged expenses and lies about his lady friend.

Discussion: Examiner and DisplayBlog

Poornima Gupta / Reuters:

Analysis: HP - Dial “M” for mayhem — (Reuters) - Leo Apotheker's credibility as a CEO is falling along with Hewlett-Packard's stock price. — Apotheker, who gained a reputation for sharp business acumen when he headed up SAP, thoroughly flummoxed HP shareholders last week with what some analysts …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Pulse2 and Gizmodo

Jean-Louis Gassee / Monday Note:
HP: What Léo Apotheker's Decisions Mean

Discussion: PC Magazine and Gizmodo

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

HP's TouchPad fire sale: The fallout — Summary: HP's TouchPad liquidation sale says a lot about the company, the tablet market and its ability to keep an e-commerce site running. — HP's TouchPad liquidation sale this weekend was telling on multiple fronts as techies drooled over a good deal …

Discussion: Guardian, PC World, The Digital Reader, Digits, Engadget, InformationWeek, Bits, techno.blog, TeleRead, @harrymccracken, iClarified, @triciad, TUAW, mocoNews, @brynaathp, Android and Me, Liliputing and BetaNews

Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
‘It was like a stampede, and they went quick’

Discussion: Gizmodo Australia, Electronista, PC World and Crave

BetaNews.com / @betanews:
Want a $99 HP TouchPad? They are hard to find. Your best bet is to keep on top of this SlickDeals thread: http://t.co/N3Va7NR

Discussion: TechnoBuffalo, Pulse2, Liliputing, L.A. Times Tech Blog, @joshuatopolsky, @percival, Shiny Objects, @brynaathp, PC World, @mrgan, Engadget, Daring Fireball, Mashable!, PhoneArena and PC World

Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:

Unleaked: Former WikiLeaks Spokesperson Destroys Over 3,500 Unpublished Documents — Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German technology activist and former spokesperson for whistleblower organization WikiLeaks, announced today that he has destroyed over 3,500 unpublished documents that used to sit …

Discussion: Reuters, FT Tech Hub, WL Central, The Tech Herald … and Boing Boing

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

iOS 5 includes early earthquake warning notifications for Japanese iPhone users — Following the devestating earthquake in Japan earlier this year, Apple has added a new early earthquake warning notification option to iOS 5. iOS 5 users in Japan can turn on early earthquake notifications …

Discussion: Penn-Olson, MacRumors, TiPb, TekGoblin and iClarified

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Facebook, Twitter Drew Record Numbers Of U.S. Visitors In July — comScore's July traffic numbers are out and similar to June's findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors …

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Another EA Exec Jumps Ship To Zynga; Jeff Karp Joins As Chief Marketing And Revenue Officer — Zynga has snagged another EA exec today. The social gaming giant is announcing today that former EA Executive Vice President Jeff Karp is joining as Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer.

Discussion: AllThingsD and VentureBeat

Zee M Kane / The Next Web:

Twitter Just Got the Respect it Deserves — If you're one to check your analytics on a daily basis you may have noticed a pretty sharp increase in referrals from Twitter's “t.co” domains. We noticed it almost immediately on Wednesday but naively didn't pay much attention.

Discussion: getclicky.com/blog, more at Mediagazer »

Arnold Kim / MacRumors:

Apple Testing LTE in iOS 5 and Hiring More LTE Engineers — Early last week, Boy Genius Report claimed that Apple has been testing a 4G LTE-enabled iPhone with carriers, and pointed to an “internal iOS test build” of one of Apple's major mobile partners. In that build was a property list file (.plist) for LTE.

Discussion: Redmond Pie, Techie Buzz, Pulse2, Examiner, SlashGear, AppleInsider, PC World, everythingiCafe, Electronista and iClarified

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple is field-testing LTE iOS 5 devices, could the next-gen iPad run on LTE?

Thanks:aaron_nussbaum

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