The "Other" Microsoft Founder Does a Deal

TechFlash reports: This certainly won't cover all of the losses that Paul Allen has accumulated on bankrupt Charter Communications over the years. In fact, it may add to them. The Seattle billionaire's Vulcan Ventures achieved another exit in his startup portfolio, though it is unclear whether any real money was made in the deal.

Nokia today announced it had acquired Plum, a 10-person San Francisco and Boston startup that created a way for small groups to securely share status updates, videos and photos from social networking sites.

Not much is known about the deal. Nokia issued a three sentence press release on it, which really only said that Plum will complement the mobile phone giant's social location services. It was also classified as an asset sale, usually a signal that there wasn't a big outcome.

Vulcan's David Postman declined to go into financial details, though he did say that "we are pleased with this outcome given this tough market environment."

Plum was backed with more than $5 million from Vulcan and Levensohn Venture Partners.

This isn't the first time that Nokia has ventured into the social media space with an acquisition. In 2007, it bought Redmond online photo and video sharing service Twango, though the Kirkland offices were shut down earlier this year.

At one point, Nokia had planned to grow the Seattle area offices to as many as 125 people.