Nokia Buys Twango Media Sharing Service

Yesterday, Twango announced that Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has acquired its media-sharing service. With this acquisition, Nokia will be able to offer its customers an easy way to share multimedia content on their desktop PCs and mobile phones.

"Nokia's unique vision for social media aligns perfectly with Twango," said Twango co-founder, Jim Laurel. "It's really exciting to imagine what we can achieve by combining our social media experience with the resources of a company that has played such a major role in shaping the mobile landscape."

The Twango media-sharing service allows users to organize, share, and republish photos, videos and audio clips easily. Unlike some other competing social media services, Twango supports multiple media types (110 file types total) and offers a comprehensive array of options for people to manage, share, and repurpose their personal media content.

The Twango platform also allows developers to create companion applications, connect with mobile devices, and integrate with other Web services. With the help of Nokia, Twango now expects to capture a wider audience. No financial terms of the deal were announced with the news of the acquisition.

“The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks – at anytime, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose,” said Anssi Vanjoki, a Nokia executive. “When you combine a Nokia Nseries multimedia computer that is always on, always connected, and always with you together with a rich media sharing destination like Twango, people will have exciting new ways to create and enjoy rich media experiences in real time.”

Twango co-founder, Serena Glover, also added that “as a result of this acquisition, we will aggressively build out our team in the Seattle area, allowing us to deliver a superior global media sharing service.”

According to the press release, Nokia sold over 140 million connected cameras, and its devices are rapidly becoming the world’s primary source of images and videos. This new acquisition will further expand Nokia's growing portfolio of internet services that users can access through their mobile devices.

With the large customer base that Nokia has, this news will affect quite a lot of people. It is still unknown, however, how this will change the Twango service directly and whether users of non-Nokia mobile device will be able to use the service. We will just have to keep our eyes open and see how the rest develops.