WhitePages.com, the online directory service, is acquiring Snapvine.com, a provider of voice services for social networks. WhitePages intends to integrate SnapVine’s voice services into its own product, and it anticipates new services including private voicemail and SMS services for the sites users. Perhaps the integration may provide a lesson for eBay/Skype, which had a pretty similar sounding vision. Seattle-based SnapVine has raised at least $12 million from Bridgescale, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and First Round Capital, and it claims its services have been installed on 5 million profiles across various social networking services. Snapvine CEO Joe Heitzeberg will stay on as VP of a new vision, reporting to WhitePages CEO Alex Algard. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Release.

Tricia adds: In WhitePages.com’s coporate blog today, Algard writes that they look forward to rolling out free, private voicemail boxes where others can leave messages without disclosing the recipient’s personal home or cell phone number. They will also launch a text-based relay service based on email and SMS. In the post, Heitzeberg and Algard recorded their own message to show off Snapvine’s technology. In purchasing Snapvine, it may buy WhitePages a level of hipness a phone number directory doesn’t normally have. Snapvine told The Seattle Times in September that its widget is on about 200 different social-networking sites, and its player — which is used to listen to messages — was being loaded nearly 22 million times a day by people logging on to their profiles. That’s a target demographic that WhitePages may not be attracting today.

Separately, it’s worth pointing out a couple of statements made in today’s press release. Whitepages said it raised $45 million in venture capital in 2005, and that revenues have more than doubled since with an expectation of hitting $70 million this year. That round was not used to grow the business, but to cash out the founders and employees. As the Seattle Times reported, the “unidentified investors purchased $31.7 million in stock from the founder, friends and family and employees. About $9.4 million more replaced working capital the company had sent out as dividends.” The company did not disclose the details of the transaction, but perhaps it was able to use cash generated from the business?

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