Nokia confirms acquisition of Dopplr

Finnish handset vendor Nokia on Tuesday confirmed the acquisition of travel-focused social network Dopplr, which is run, incidentally, by ex-Nokia director of design strategy, Marko Ahtisaari.

Dopplr fills the niche of ‘intention broadcasting’ rather than status broadcasting, whereby users publish details of where they are travelling to, with the aim of discovering coincidences in the travel plans of their network of contacts.

Both parties are keeping quiet on the details but the purchase price was rumoured to be between €10m and €15m, which is also thought to be less than Ahtisaari was hoping for.

The move fits in with Nokia’s rash of acquisitions in the social networking space. Earlier this month, Nokia bought cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service Plum, and that was in the wake of the acquisitions of Cellity and Bit-Side earlier this year. In 2008 there was the acquisition of Plazes, and prior to that, Twango.

However, Nokia’s main foray into the social network space with its own platform – Mosh – was ill fated and the meeting place recently closed its doors.