Everybody was expecting them and here they are: rumors of Google acquiring Riya. It can certainly be a sensible acquisition from Google point of view, but I’m not convinced that this is the best option for little Riya.

They do have a real product and they can have several real business models. They can sell subscriptions to their photo hosting service, they can integrate the proprietary facial recognition system with third party platforms, they can exploit their unique tag space, …

Furthermore digital image processing is a relatively old field, but only recently the explosion of digital cameras created the ground for new markets. Spotting the faces of your friends and relatives is certainly a nice application, but smart people at Riya could certainly figure out other services in different areas both for individuals and companies.

Munjal, Tara,
40 millions are a lot of money, but are you sure you want to become the new Blogger? You have higher expectations than that, don’t you?

Maybe, I’m just plain naive but I thought that one of the Web 2.0 characteristics was innovation flowing from small companies and not big corporation. As usual, you say? Yes, true, but this time the small companies have more chances to survive and stay small and healthy thanks to the connected fabric of the Web 2.0.

“Architecture of participation” is beautiful definition of the Web 2.0 from Tim O’Reilly, but it should apply to users and companies as well. If Web 2.0 collapse to fit into the GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) how much space is being left for participation?