Congratulations to the team at Grouply on their sale to Oodle! I’ve been on the Advisory Board of Grouply since its very early days, and am an enthusiastic user. It very significantly increase my efficiency by allowing me to monitor more online communities than I could otherwise keep an eye on.
I have to admit I was surprised that Yahoo didn’t either acquire them or copy all their functionality, given how dramatically Grouply increases the functionality of traditional Google/Yahoo groups. However, lately Yahoo seems to be focusing much more on shedding assets (and sometimes people) than on acquiring them.
Free release below:
Oodle Acquires Grouply
Oodle announced today that it has acquired Grouply, the online hub for social groups that offers features for building customized social networking groups. Oodle, a pioneer in social commerce, is reinventing the online experience for "classifieds" by building a social marketplace.
The Grouply platform and the groups hosted there will continue to function as before.
“Affinity groups such as mother’s clubs, neighborhood groups, and alumni organizations can be hot spots for trading activity,” says Craig Donato, CEO and founder of Oodle. “People care about who they are transacting with and would prefer to deal with others they know or who share their interests. With over 500,000 active groups, Grouply is a leading platform for interest-based social networks and is a natural partner for Oodle.”
The majority of Grouply’s employees will move to Oodle.
“Oodle is the perfect fit for the Grouply team and a great place for us to continue our mission of allowing people to build groups that share specific interests,” said Mark Robins, Grouply founder and CEO. “We look forward to working with our partners at Oodle to introduce some exciting new products.”
Oodle’s Marketplace lets users easily buy, sell, lend and give with other friends, friends-of-friends, and other real people in their local community. It is available on Oodle, Facebook and the iPhone. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
About Oodle
Oodle is a pioneer in social commerce and brings a social experience to the local online marketplace. Users can easily buy, sell, lend and give with friends, friends-of-friends, and other people in their local community. Oodle’s Marketplace, which has over 14M unique monthly users, is available on Oodle (www.oodle.com), Facebook (apps.facebook.com/marketplace), iPhone & Android phones (www.oodle.com/mobile) as well as dozens of other local partner marketplaces. Oodle is available in the United States (www.oodle.com), Canada (canada.oodle.com) & UK (www.oodle.co.uk).
About Grouply
Grouply is pioneering the “social group” – a new type of online community that combines the best features of social networks and online groups. Social groups offer the social interactivity, media sharing, and modern design of social networking sites like Facebook; and the rich discussions, popular email interface, and people-discovery opportunities found in traditional online group systems like Yahoo! Groups. Grouply gives existing Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO) Groups an “extreme makeover” including a fully customizable website, and active Google and Yahoo! Groups users can access all their groups in one place on Grouply.
