Mobile Social Media Provider ShoZu Acquired by Critical Path

Social Media is a hot ticket for VCs. ShoZu alone picked up US$ 25 million total in funding from investors since its inception. That investment has paid off as ShoZu gets acquired by Critical Path, a provider of messaging services and software.

ShoZu is a social media hub that allows you to upload photos and video to all your social networking sites via your mobile phone, including both the iPhone and the Blackberry. Juniper Research gave ShoZu top place in the Future Mobile Awards in 2008.

ShoZu is similar to Ping.fm, which was just acquired by Seesmic. The biggest difference being the amount of photo and video sites supported. Also Ping.fm is free, ShoZu is not.

Mobile and Social Media

Critical Path currently provides white label messaging and communication platforms to service providers and sees this acquisition as a way to add mobile social networking and messaging services to their existing customer solutions.

"The acquisition of ShoZu by Critical Path really is a beneficial matchup for both companies — resulting in a powerful capability for elegantly sharing, communicating and collaborating on information that’s at the core of personal and business relationships.” said Chris J. Wade, Chairman and CEO.

It's All in the Details

Critical Path is a private company, so the exact price of the deal isn't disclosed, but it can't be cheap. They have said that all ShoZu employees will join Critical Path and ShoZu Chairman and CEO Chris Wade come onboard as a consultant. In addition, support for the existing ShoZu platform and its customers will continue.

TechCrunch reports that the first of the combination services will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona during February.