After Microsoft"s recent acquisition spree for few companies like Acompli, Equivio, Sunrise, and N-trig, it looks like Redmond is looking into scoring another startup, if reports are accurate.
According to TechCrunch, citing anonymous sources, Microsoft is reportedly interested in acquiring the social news reader, Prismatic. The Redmond giant is apparently the frontrunner towards purchasing the startup for around $30 million. Other companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Apple are also supposedly interested.
Prismatic works by recommending news articles to the user according to his or her interests. It also analyzes the interests of friends, as well as the user"s own behaviour. All of these data point will then be used by the app to recommend more relevant news stories for the user in the future.
The product is currently available for iOS, Android, and the web. Despite its rave reviews, the app is facing a big problem: it"s hard getting a mass of users to download a news reading app as a primary way of getting information. Most people usually turn to Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networking websites to gather news, and it will be difficult to make them tear away from these websites in favor of a standalone news reading app.
Neither Microsoft nor Prismatic have publicly commented on this report.
Source: TechCrunch