Nokia to acquire Plazes

Thomas Husson | June 23, 2008, 08:57 AM

Plazes is a start-up providing context-aware social-activity service.

The company headquartered in Zurich is quite small but its team has a good expertise in adding the elements of "place" and "time" to social networking.

From Loopt to Gypsii, a couple of players have embraced this trend, which seems key in the mobile space. I had a recent demo of Share on Ovi (with automatic updating of geo-tagged pics taken with your camera phone) and little by little, step by step, acquisition per acquition, Nokia's Internet approach is revealed.

I am really curious to see how 2 trends will evolve moving forward:

- when and to which extent will traditional social networking sites integrate those kind of features / services for their existing members?

- when and to which extent will traditional media companies integrate social networking features do their own websites?