An African Company Has Bought The Popular Social Networking Platform, Nimbuzz

Remember Nimbuzz?

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Mara Social Media acquires Nimbuzz

Remember Nimbuzz? It used to be a really popular social network before WhatsApp came and stole the show. It was released in 2008 and was cross platform like WhatsApp and went on to acquire millions of users.

Now today, it has emerged that Mara Social Media, an African multi channel platform has announced that they have acquired Nimbuzz Assets. This is big since Nimbuzz has over 200 million users and it is available on several platforms ranging from Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry, PC, Mac and even Symbian.

“We see a strong momentum for consumer messaging apps, which are set to overtake social media apps globally.” Anubhav Nagar, Mara Social Media’s CEO was quoted. “According to reports and current trends, it is clear that social media apps are likely to be eclipsed by messaging apps in the next two years. This is the opportunity, which we identified with Nimbuzz.”

As part of the acquisition, Mara now owns the Nimbuzz assets which include integration of Nimbuzz and Holaa, its IP and database. However, they didn’t reveal how much they paid for Nimbuzz and Holaa.

Mara also has plans for the new purchase. They will roll out a “hybrid” approach for Nimbuzz which would be an amalgamation of content. They plan to integrate Nimbuzz on Mara platforms like Mara Mentor and Mara jobs into Nimbuzz.

“Through this multiplatform integration of Nimbuzz & Mara’s current consumer facing platforms, the long term play for Mara Social Media is to enable commerce by growing and amplifying the power of the user base & engagement.”

3 COMMENTS

  1. The problem Nimbuzz solved was that it enabled people to browse social media and get notifications on dumb phones. Ever since smartphones took over, it has been dying a quick death. I would say Mara might even have bought a shell.

    • I think the idea Mara has by acquiring Nimbuzz is the same model Wechat has disrupted with. Starting with 200 million users (if regularly active) is actually something. Plus they already have the content that will make people regulars, even with many other better messaging apps with 4 times more users.

      “They plan to integrate Nimbuzz on Mara platforms like Mara Mentor and Mara jobs into Nimbuzz.”

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