Microsoft Acquires Social Shopping Network Jellyfish

October 1, 2007 — 11:43 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — Share This

We've just caught wind that Microsoft has acquired Jellyfish, the Wisconsin-based social shopping site. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the official announcement has not yet been made, but is expected very soon.

Jellyfish will remain its own entity under the Microsoft umbrella, and all of Jellyfish's 26 employees will stay on board. Co-founded by Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire, this is the third company that Wiegand has sold, including Business Filings which was sold to a Dutch publishing company in 2002 for $14 million. Jellyfish had also raised about $5 million a year ago, with much of the funding going towards the improvement of Jellyfish's search technology and social components for shopping online.

It's expected that Jellyfish will be incorporated into Windows Live search, but its extensive social networking components and live games, including Smack Shopping, are the crowning jewels of its social shopping experience. With Microsoft's revised focus on growing its online presence in the social networking realm, this may be more heavily incorporated into some of Windows Live's other services, such as its niche community or moms.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be tweaking its ad platform for Windows Live Search, which will shift more attention to the quality of prominent ad placement. Yahoo has incorporated some fun shopping tools on its portal as well, with the promotion of the Woot Daily Deal. DivX has also swapped Google for Yahoo to power its search or its online video-sharing networks.

[via Wisconsin State Journal]