GroupMe acquired by Skype (opens in new tab)

Price? If they got $10M in funding, I assume that they sold for more than 50M?

For a reported $85M: http://dthin.gs/owvvqM

I really hope Skype lets GroupMe continue to operate on it's own, and doesn't ruin it. It's an awesome service, and lets me keep in touch with my tech-adverse friends from back home. Some people use AIM, some use Facebook, some use email, some use MSN, some use BBM -- but everyone has texting.

The beauty is the simplicity. On vacation with some friends? Spin up a new groupme for the week. I can't see it remaining this easy if skype starts taking advantage of "integration points".

I find that interesting from Twilio's perspective: GroupMe was using Twilio to send SMSs (at least at first, but they didn't have much time to change the most important part of their service) and Twilio has recently added some VoIP components (Twilio Client) to their offer, which, even though doesn't compete directly with Skype, is covering much more bases than Skype is when it comes to integration in web or mobile apps.

And based on some announced usage numbers from GroupMe a few months ago I imagine Twilio was/is making good money from them alone…

This is really interesting and exciting from Microsoft's perspective. As I understand it, while a purchase like the Skype purchase waits for approval by the regulatory bodies, the purchasing company (Microsoft) and company pending purchase (Skype) have very limited communication.

My guess is that Microsoft had no involvement in this purchase and is basically winding up with GroupMe as a party favor. Pretty nifty party favor, if you ask me.

Could Google Huddle have influenced Skype to make this move? Google is clearly trying to enter the group messaging space and has the infrastructure to support both text and voice group communication.

I'm going to need an aggregator for my social aggregators between Huddle, GroupMe, Social Hub, Buzz, Foursquare, IM and SMS.

Congrats to the GroupMe team. I had a chance to meet a couple of them a while ago and they were really nice guys. Well-deserved.

I'm curious what people generally prefer between group SMS and group data messaging?

Wow. I was there. And I am still bootstrapping my company. Well we got seed money but a lot of it was still bootstrapped.

Yet I feel we have way bigger ambitions... I wonder sometimes if raising investment sooner was better