Bump is one of the most famous apps on mobile platforms. The application allows smartphone users to share information, such as contact info or photos, by simply ‘bumping’ hands together. Although Bump has been successful in terms of downloads, garnering approximately 125 million, it has struggled to create a solid business model that generates revenue. However the makers of Bump no longer need to worry about revenue, because they will now have access to billions through Google. The search giant announced today that they will be acquiring Bump. As reported by theverge.com:
“Bump CEO and founder David Lieb announced that his company had been acquired by Google. Bump builds a set of proprietary technologies that allow devices to share data. The selling point is that users can exchange photos or contacts by simply bumping their phones together. What makes Bump different is that this transfer of data is not enabled by near-field-communication, or NFC, which is what normally powers this kind of exchange.”
The terms of the acquisition were not publicly disclosed, but it is speculated that Bump will continue its operations under the Google umbrella. According to techcrunch.com:
“Bump and the collaborative photo sharing app called Flock it released last year ‘will continue to work as they always have for now; stay tuned for future updates.’ The blog post doesn’t mention what will happen to the Bump Pay app the startup built on top of PayPal that lets users make peer-to-peer mobile payments by knocking fists.”
“What may have interested Google actually isn’t Bump itself, but Flock. The app uses geolocation to determine which of your Facebook friends you’re nearby, and then offers to create a collaborative photo album with them that includes all the shots any of you took at that party, concert, or day in the park. The idea is that your friends might not broadcast all those photos to social media, but you’d still want to see them as you all shared the experience together. The Flock design philosophy was to strip as much out of the photo sharing process as possible to make it seem almost automatic. Google might look to turn Flock into a part of Google+ as a way to simultaneously compete with Facebook’s photo sharing and Dropbox’s photo saving services.”
While some may consider Bump’s sale to Google a failure for the company, because didn’t to create a viable business model for itself, this acquisition may be a win-win. Google gets a smart company with technologies that can immediately improve the experience of other products; Bump gets to be an innovation app company dealing solely with the user experience, without the revenue piece.
