Facebook Acquires Twitter and 4 More Deals That Should Happen

Today’s big news
from TechCrunch is is that Google is in the final stages of acquiring digg
for about $200 million.  Makes sense to me.  Particularly given some of Google’s
recent experiments having social voting in their search results pages.

I’d been thinking about startup acquisitions earlier this year (and started
keeping a side list of deals I thought should get done).  Just as an
amusing exercise.

The 5 Tech Deals That Should Happen

Disclaimer:  When I say should happen, it’s not a prediction, just
something that I think makes sense.

1.  Facebook should
acquire Twitter:  Let’s
face it, back in the early days, some of us wondered how Twitter was different
from an enhanced version of Facebook status updates.  I think the two products
would work well together, and Facebook has the resources to help Twitter get
over some of the current platform stability issues.

2.  Google should
acquire FriendFeed: 
This would be a bit similar to the FeedBurner acquisition (although FriendFeed
is nowhere near as far along).  Google gets a good product that can further it’s
social networking stuff.

3.  Microsoft should
acquire Xobni:  This one’s
already been talked about before, and almost happened.  It should happen. 
Xobini’s got a great team, Microsoft needs some new energy in the Outlook
group.

4.  Intuit should
acquire Freshbooks: 
You may not have heard of Freshbooks, but it’s a cool company with a cool
product for invoicing.  Intuit needs a much better web offering, and the
Freshbook folks have great design and are great entrepreneurs.

5.  Ning should acquire
Mixx:  Ning is growing, but
needs more “best of breed” style social networking apps.  Mixx is brilliantly
executed and more and more people want/need some type of focused social news
product as part of a larger social network or community.

So, what do you think?  What’s your vote for the acquisitions in the
remainder of 2008 that should happen?  Leave ‘em and debate ‘em in the
comments.

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