Plazes posted some big news this morning,  announcing an agreement for their acquisition by Nokia .

Based in Berlin, Plazes started out strong in 2005 as an early LBS social networking concept. While European adoption was far greater than US audiences, the general spotlight on it’s value seems to have shifted over the last year to newcomers such as Brightkite, Whrll, and Dopplr.

Their announcement today states:

“in the near future plazes will be made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices. This represents a validation of our concepts and of the resiliance of an excellent development team”

They also indicate they are still committed to releasing the iPhone Plazer, an app that’s been rumored for a while now.  One of the biggest critiques of the Plazes concept has always been the lack of an intuitive mobile Plazer client, relying on SMS to handle the bulk of handheld functions.  Tighter integration with a mobile technology group like Nokia might be just what they need to get back on the LBS map…

one of my favorite Plazes photos, courtesy of agoasi