It looks like back-to-school shopping has hit venture capitalists and Facebook this week. The social networking company announced an intriguing acquisition of digital book publisher Push Pop Press. Meanwhile, Inkling, which has a publishing platform for putting textbooks on the iPad, raised a new round of funding.
Facebook’s acquisition prompted a wave of speculation in the blogosphere. Push Pop stated on its blog that Facebook “isn’t planning to start publishing digital books.” However, both the New York Times’ Bits blog and PCWorld speculated that there could be an opportunity.
“Facebook could leverage its millions of users for a publishing model. The company could easily create a digital bookstore seamlessly integrated with the social network,” wrote Ilie Mitaru of PCWorld.
The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss noted that the acquisition was for talent and could get Facebook “serious about interface”.
Manwhile, GigaOM and Wired lamented that the start-up had sold out too early.
“We sorely need independent innovation in digital publishing. We need talented people who are willing to try things. Meanwhile, all of the money, attention and technological skill is marching in the opposite direction,” wrote Tim Carmody of Wired.
Meanwhile, Inkling announced it had raised $17m in funding. The digital textbook publisher, which counts Pearson (owner of the Financial Times) among its investors, plans to expand its staff and has growing competition from companies such as Amazon, which recently launched a Kindle Textbook Rental service.
Not that books of the dead-tree variety have gone out of fashion with financiers quite yet. Also this week, CampusBookRentals, a Utah-based textbook rental and book buy back service, announced that it raised $20m in funding, VentureBeat reported.
Could education start-ups be the “new gold rush” of Silicon Valley? Chikodi Chima of The Next Web thinks so.
