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Wireless - Monday, June 23, 2008

Nokia Buys German Location-based Navigation Startup Plazes

Nokia has bought Germany location-based Web 2.0 and mobile firm Plazes for an undisclosed amount. as our sister site the a:c euro reported, Plazes is a Swiss company that was founded in December 2005 with R&D is in Berlin. Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures invested €2.7m in its first round in February 2007. In 2006, Plazes won seed financing from well-known angel investors Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen) and Martin Varsavsky (FON founder).

Pazes is a website that users exploit to locate friends, colleagues, and wireless hotspots. The user downloads a client which sends the users' location back to the Plazes database and that spot or location can then be searched, mapped and located by other registered users. It can also be edited with photo, text descriptions, and other bits of info.

Plazes doesn't seem to get much traffic and certainly there is no business model to speak of so we suspect that Nokia got a good bargain with this one and can certainly figure out how to evangelize usage for a product that should have appeal beyond its current geek crowd.

The German narrator here makes Plazes seem as dull as dirt, but you still get a good idea of how it works.

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