Web 2.0 Money

New Way to Acquire National Advertisers - MediaBids’ Per-Inquiry Print Advertising Program

Web 2.0 Innovations — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:08:10 +0000

MediaBids.com, the Newspaper and Magazine Advertising Marketplace, announced today that its revolutionary response-based print advertising program continues to grow by offering a non-conventional revenue source to newspapers and magazines during these difficult times for the print industry. Mediabids’ Per-Inquiry Advertising program provides newspapers and magazines with a unique way to acquire print advertising revenue from new, national, direct-response advertisers who have traditionally devoted most of their budgets to online advertising.

Since 2003, MediaBids has been working to make buying and selling print advertising easier. Its website, www.mediabids.com, has provided a unique marketplace for publications and advertisers to interact, using online tools to buy and sell print advertising space. As a result of growing demand by advertisers for a print advertising system that combines an easier way to place ads with a results-driven payment structure, MediaBids developed its Per-Inquiry Print Advertising Program .

MediaBids’ Per-Inquiry (PI) Print Advertising Program enables newspapers and magazines to run ads from a select group of national advertisers simply by filling out a form on the MediaBids website. These advertisers pay for their print advertising on a Per-Inquiry basis – meaning there is a fixed dollar amount they will pay for each lead or sale generated from their ads placed in newspapers & magazines. Current advertisers available for publications to choose from include: Vonage, Dish Network, Walkfit, Allcare, Tronix Country, Moscow Ballet, Inches-A-Weigh, Associated Tax Relief and more – a full list can be seen here: http://marketing.mediabids.com/pi/AllAdvertisers.html

MediaBids delivers creative to the publication for the requested advertiser – each ad has a response-tracking mechanism in place and publications are provided with reporting information. Currently, MediaBids has over 1,300 publications nationwide placing advertisements on a per-response basis.

“I have been extremely pleased with the Per-Inquiry ad program offered by MediaBids . It’s a fantastic way to create advertising revenue, as well as give our newspaper a continuing stream of new advertisers that come from efforts outside the traditional methods we use,” says Dave Gwiazdon, Associate Publisher, The Sacramento Union .

“We’ve worked with thousands of print advertisers over the years who have echoed the same sentiment – it’s not the medium, it’s the method. Our advertisers love print advertising, some just don’t love the conventional way of buying. That’s where we hope our Per-Inquiry Advertising Program will come in - providing advertisers with a program that pairs tracking capabilities and a results-based payment structure with a medium that can deliver a unique level of response, branding and engagement,” says Jedd Gould, President, MediaBids.com .

Publications and advertisers can learn more about MediaBids’ Per-Inquiry Advertising Program by visiting: http://marketing.mediabids.com/pi/

The company claims it has over 4,600 U.S. print publications registered on MediaBids to use their online processes to sell ad space in their print editions. Publications can sell ad space via two primary online methods – a straight-sales option and a reverse advertising auction. In the straight-sale format, publications can simply post available advertising inventory for sale in the MediaBids marketplace which is then immediately available for advertisers to purchase. The patented reverse-auction method allows advertisers to place their advertising dollars up for bid using a simple online RFP auction form, and publications can then bid using their ad space as currency.

The company is known to have started back in 2003 and for just 5 years they have enrolled an impressive number of newspapers and paper magazines. The company says it has over 12,000 businesses registered on MediaBids.com that purchase advertising. The online ad networks and ad exchanges are huge business but the space is lately becoming overcrowded and the competition is fierce there and perhaps we will witness some serious reorganization and consolidation within the industry the next few years.

This story has been picked up from EPR Network.

http://www.mediabids.com/
http://express-press-release.net/47/MediaBids.com%20Adds%20Over%20325%20Newspapers%20&%20Magazines%20to%20Print%20Advertising%20Marketplace.php
http://express-press-release.net/12/Mediabids,%20the%20Only%20Online%20Print%20Ad%20Space%20Marketplace,%20Saves%20Client,%20Green%20River%20Prescription%20Assistance,%2082%20Percent%20On%20Newspaper%20Advertising%20Costs.php
http://express-press-release.net/45/MediaBids.com%20Conducts%206,500th%20Print%20Advertising%20Auction.php
http://express-press-release.net/50/MediaBids%27%20Per-Inquiry%20Print%20Advertising%20Program%20Provides%20Newspapers%20&%20Magazines%20with%20a%20New%20Way%20to%20Acquire%20National%20Advertisers.php

New Features for the 3CX Phone System for Windows

Web 2.0 Innovations — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:14:14 +0000

3CX (www.3cx.com) has announced the release of version 6.0 of 3CX Phone System for Windows. The most recent version of the award-winning and software-based PBX ships with 10 key new enterprise-level features such as call conferencing, paging and Windows 2008 support. These 10 new features were developed by the international software development company in only 20 weeks.

Call conferencing, Paging and Windows 2008 support among major features added to software-based 3CX Phone System for Windows in record time

“We are very excited to launch this new version of 3CX Phone System for Windows. 3CX’ development team has proved that we can turn around new versions and new features in record time. What would take years on traditional PBXs takes only months on a software-based PBX like ours; simply because the structure is much more manageable” said Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX.

“With our new Windows 2008 support, organizations can virtualize the PBX and run a phone system without the need for an appliance or an extra server. This means lower administration costs, no extra hardware and less energy consumption.”

10 Key New Features of 3CX Phone System for Windows v6.0

Call conference service – up to 32 participants.
Windows 2008 server support – run a PBX virtualized.
Paging – page groups of users to broadcast a message.
Intercom – with two-way audio capability.
Support for Vegastream gateways (Patton & Audiocode already supported).
Enhanced SIP interoperability – addition of support for many leading international VoIP providers and SIP phones.
BLF provisioning – automatic provision of BLF lights indicating extension status on phones.
Phonebook Provisioning – listing all extensions and allowing addition of custom entries.
Fax – 3CX’ fax server allows the whole network to send and receive faxes.
Extended HTTP API - ability to switch recording on/off, disable an extension, and disable outbound calls for an extension.

3CX Phone System for Windows allows businesses to completely break free from the restrictions of costly hardware-based, proprietary phone systems. It also includes many other features that make 3CX Phone System easy to install, configure, manage and use; helping businesses increase employees’ mobility and productivity.

Four available editions: Small Business, Pro, Enterprise and Free

3CX Phone System is available in four editions, all supporting an unlimited number of extensions. The Free edition is limited to 8 simultaneous calls, whereas, the commercial editions can be extended beyond that and have a more extensive feature set. The Small Business version supports up to 8, the Pro version up to 16 and the Enterprise edition supports up to 32 simultaneous calls. Call capacity can be expanded with upgrade packs. A detailed edition comparison chart can be found on http://www.3cx.com/phone-system/edition-comparison.html.

3CX Phone System Free edition

A Free edition, supporting an unlimited number of extensions, is also available. It can be downloaded from http://www.3cx.com/phone-system/download-phone-system.html.

About 3CX

3CX is an international developer of telecommunications software, headquartered in Europe with offices in the UK, USA, Germany, Cyprus, Malta and Hong Kong. It is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and is backed by an experienced management and development team. Its product, 3CX Phone System for Windows, developed specifically for the SMB (small & medium business) market, has earned Windows Server 2003 Certification and has received numerous awards, including the TMC Labs 2007 Innovation Award, The Windowsnetworking.com Gold Award, as well as, the IT EXPO Best of Show award 2007, the INTERNET Telephony Magazine Product of the Year Award, and the Communications Solutions 2007 Award, all in recognition to the company’s commitment to innovation and quality. 3CX maintains a global presence with offices in six countries and localized information available in various languages. For more information, visit www.3cx.com.

via EPR Network

Soaring gas prices help services like Car-Pooling and Ride-Sharing flourish

Web 2.0 Innovations — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:50:48 +0000

The Kirchweidach, Germany and Mountain View, Calif based start-up called DriJo seems to be on the right track to help people offset their dependence on the high fuel prices by offering an auction-based ride sharing and car pooling matching service, making partial use of Google Maps technology.

Ride sharing & car pooling is a phenomena similar to a second-hand product market. In both cases a great majority of people are not doing it principally for environmental reasons but to save cost, use High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, etc.

It is first and foremost a social stigma and practicality/matching issue to find the right person to share a ride.

Regarding that dilemma eBay overcame three issues in the product market. To have value attributed to seemingly worthless second-hand stuff (which would be the empty seats in ride sharing). To make it socially acceptable to buy second-hand in many industrialized countries. In all cases it is socially accepted to save costs with eBay.

In a visually very attractive way, DriJo offers a simple method to overlay and compare routes of drivers and potential passengers. “Using an auction-based method similar to other popular auction sites should,” according to the CEO Walter, “animate more drivers to offer rides, especially on highly demanded routes”.

DriJo with its auction-based ride-sharing model assures that:

supply and demand of routes based on the starting and arrival address are overlaid and compared automatically and shown on maps or satellite pictures, based on the Google Maps database, practically all addresses, even remote ones in the country-side, can be found - similarly to navigation devices,
the cost of ride sharing between driver and passenger is determined by supply and demand via an auction, a registration of all users gives additional security, feedback after traveling by both driver and passenger increases the trustworthiness of both of them.

“Our matching also allows comparing longer routes with shorter requests,” according to the CTO Peter, “and the driver can even define an optional pick-up and drop-off zone along the route to be more attractive to potential passengers.”

Paid ride-sharing is popular in both the US and Europe. In the primary countries in Europe and US/Canada it is estimated to be well over 50.000/day.

On a general basis the market of ride sharing agencies is presently badly distributed between many small ad-based institutions. As a consequence it is very difficult to find regional and long-distance trips in one agency. Additionally these companies generate their own databases which in practically all cases do not include addresses or smaller towns.

DriJo is presently owner-financed and focuses via its patented technology and the innovative business model on the redefinition of the ride-sharing market.

Carsharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. The organization renting the cars may be a commercial business or the users may be organized as a democratically-controlled company, public agency, cooperative, ad hoc grouping. Today there are more than six hundred cities in the world where people can carshare.

Carsharing is supported by the New Mobility Agenda, which combines Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies and measures for containing, channeling and limiting private car traffic in cities, with support of a “bouquet” of alternative transportation arrangements. These include utility cycling, walking, Verde’s Green Program in Miami, and public space improvement, electronic substitutes for travel (such as telework, telecommuting or e-work) and a variety of shared and public transport strategies.

Here is a list of car sharing companies across the globe.

* Photo by Wikipedia (Carsharing vehicles in their reserved spots)

Story picked from EPR Network

http://www.drijo.com/
http://express-press-release.com/49/Drijo%20is%20the%20Ebay%20of%20Car%20Pooling.php
http://express-press-release.com/Industries/Internet-Online-press-releases.php
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/ride-sharing-by-auction-ebay-principle-and-based-on-google-mapsTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsharing
http://www.ecoplan.org/carshare/
http://www.carsharing.ca/
http://www.ecoplan.org/wtpp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mobility_Agenda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carsharing_operators
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/TDM

Live Universe acquires yet another deadpooled start-up on the cheap

Web 2.0 Innovations — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:53:33 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we realized the shopping pattern of Live Universe is to buy failed, but over funded, start ups on the cheap and the deal we read about a few days ago makes no exception. Just over a few week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper buyer. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Wonder no longer – Live Universe is here to help. As you may guess they bought the failed company, perhaps on the cheap too. We tried to find out what the acquisition price is, but since we found nothing neither reliable enough nor even rumors around the blogosphere about the exact price, we do assume the price tag is not much different from what the other failed start-up enjoyed in their deals with Live Universe. Call it $1M and you might be closer to the truth than you may expect.

Well not bad, except the fact that Jangl has raised $9M to date from a number of perhaps unhappy investors today. Among others Jangl’s investors include Storm Ventures, Labrador Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital, Alex Mendez, Stuart Davidson and Chris Hadsell.

Based on a number of posts across the blogosphere we learn that problems of the company have likely started the late last fall. By that time Jangl’s board began telling the founders to pursue an acquisition strategy or raise more money despite the company had closed deals with several partners, including Plentyoffish and Tagged.

Despite the rumors that many companies have taken a look into the Jangl, it is clear that no deal has emerged from those interests.

Jangl allows consumers to exchange text messages, phone calls and voicemail without sharing their real numbers. Jangl customers can send/receive SMS messages from their mobile device or their Jangl account online, have voice messages sent directly to their email or profile inbox as MP3 files, and block contact from someone at any time, among other capabilities. Jangl provides its services to users of Facebook (JanglMe application), Bebo, Plentyoffish.com, Match.com, Friendster, Tagged, FriendFinder, Fubar, and more, and also offers its services at Jangl.com.

In late 2007, Jangl began testing a variety of ad placements in phone calls and SMS messages. One of its most recently partners - dating site Plentyoffish.com - will be a free service supported entirely by advertising. This advertising revenue stream will be Jangl’s second, as the company has already been generating partner revenue since January 2007.

Other companies bought on the cheap by Live Universe include Pageflakes (funding $4.1- sold out for what is known to be in the $1M range). Revver ’s total funding is known to be in the $12.7M range coming from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III – sold also out for anything between $1M and $2M. MeeVee itself has also taken a whopping amount of money from the venture capitalists — $25M over the past years, we bet on it has also been sold out for anything in the $1M / $2M range. From the 3 companies above, MeeVee seemed by that time to have traffic, at least. Today’s deal is for yet another company that has taken $9M and has perhaps gone for nothing more than $1M.

A simple math that we started out a couple of weeks ago revealed that Live Universe has bought $42M worth in distressed assets for $3M in total and if we include the deal from today it turns out that the buyer has acquired web properties that have taken over $51M to develop for $4M in all.

The buying company LiveUniverse is probably most popular with the fact it has been founded by one of the founders of MySpace - Brad Greenspan. With over 55M monthly unique visitors, LiveUniverse is one of the world’s largest online entertainment networks. They operate several successful and popular websites across three core verticals: Video, Social Networking & Music. LiveVideo is one of their sites, which about a year ago instigated a scandal on YouTube when it reportedly paid top YouTube users to come to its platform. LiveUniverse founder Brad Greenspan, who was involved with MySpace early on, is perhaps best known for his lawsuits protesting the company’s sale to News Corp.

Competitors/similar companies include: SayNow, Jajah, Jaxtr, Dial Plus, GrandCentral and TringMe.

http://www.liveuniverse.com/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/liveuniverse
http://jangl.com/
http://cerdafied.typepad.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/16/live-universe-picking-up-jangls-pieces/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/jangl
http://www.techmeme.com/070524/p7#a070524p7
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/07/internet-phone-company-jangl-to-sell-assets-core-team-goes-to-competitor-jajah/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/05/09/live-universe-acquires-yet-another-over-funded-start-up-on-the-cheap/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/02/15/revver-the-video-revenue-sharing-site-finally-sells-out-but-the-price-is-not-hefty/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/04/15/pageflakes-is-acquired-by-brad-greenspan%e2%80%99s-live-universe/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/02/15/revver-the-video-revenue-sharing-site-finally-sells-out-but-the-price-is-not-hefty/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/04/08/meevee-put-itself-up-for-sale/

Mobile Web 2.0 to reach $22.4B by 2013, says Juniper Research

Web 2.0 Innovations — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:47:29 +0000

The global market for Mobile Web 2.0 will be worth $22.4bn in 2013, up from $5.5bn currently, according to a new report by Juniper Research. Embracing social networking & User Generated Content (UGC), mobile search and mobile IM (Instant Messaging), Mobile Web 2.0 provides a framework for delivery of collaborative applications, further enhanced and contextualized via LBS (Location Based Services).

In its latest report - ‘Mobile Web 2.0: Leveraging ‘Location, IM, Social Web & Search’ - Juniper examines how a fundamental shift in Internet usage patterns is shaping Mobile Web development, driving subscriber adoption and forcing structural changes within the industry. At the core of this evolution is the user as a creator and consumer of content (i.e. the prosumer), and the ’social web’ - which describes a wide variety of social computing tools enabling users to develop detailed Web identities, create online communities and communicate with like-minded individuals.

“Combining the power of the social network map - namely: ‘who I know, how I know and where I know’ - with that of mobility, presents the greatest opportunity for revenue generation of any of the applications as defined within Juniper’s Mobile Web 2.0 framework,” states Ian Chard, Juniper Research Analyst and author of the new report. “The phone is carried with us most of the time and contains a huge amount of personal data, making it a logical extension for the social network and a host of other collaborative Web 2.0 applications being mobilised.”

Other findings from the report:

Total global revenues for mobile social networking/UGC will rocket from $1.8bn in 2008, to $11.2bn in 2013, accounting for 50% of the market, while growth in mobile search and mobile IM will be more measured;
Service revenues will account for the lion’s-share of total Mobile Web 2.0 revenues, although mobile advertising represents a significant opportunity;
Far East & China, Western Europe and North America dominate the global market for Mobile Web 2.0, but will be surpassed by the developing regions over the forecast period.

Fresh Challenges

Despite the new opportunities for players across the value chain, Mobile Web 2.0 creates fresh challenges over and above those typically associated with mobilising Internet applications. MNOs must adjust to advertising-sponsored strategies and accommodate partnerships with Web-based players, while device manufacturers and technology vendors must somehow find the means to stitch together what is at present, a highly-fragmented market. Any player in Social Web is also subject to regulatory measures concerning privacy and data retention.

Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of the Mobile Web 2.0 market based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the organisations leading this growing market.

Whitepapers and further details of the study ‘Mobile Web 2.0: Leveraging ‘Location, IM, Social Web & Search’ 2008-2013 can be freely downloaded from http://www.juniperresearch.com

Juniper Research is a telecoms analyst firm specialising in the mobile and wireless sector with particular emphasis on business models, applications, content and device strategies. Juniper is headquartered in the UK and has been operational for five years. Juniper Research provides market expertise and advice to organisations operating across the telecoms and related sectors. We publish regular off-the-shelf research reports and provide business modelling, market sizing, forecasting and competitive analysis to consultancy clients across the world.

http://www.juniperresearch.com/
http://www.juniperresearch.com/about-us.php
http://www.juniperresearch.com/shop/viewpressrelease.php?id=119&pr=91
http://www.juniperresearch.com/shop/viewauthor.php?id=119&author=84

Facebook raised $100M more, total is now at $493M

Web 2.0 Innovations — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:52:25 +0000

Facebook keeps on growing so does its expenditures. The latest news from the company is that they have raised yet another $100M round of funding. The company says this time all the money will go for buying servers, lots of servers. BusinessWeek has estimated they are going to scale things up with 50,000 new servers on top of their 10,000 they are currently running on. Total amount of money raised by Facebook is now $493M (we did the math and it seems $438M in total, but other more reliable sources claim it is $493M) according to several sources. This time, however, the founding is not against equity, but is a venture lending deal with TriplePoint Capital, a Menlo Park, Calif. based company that specializes in lending money to startups. Facebook already claims 109M monthly unique visitors and many people say the site is at times very slow.

Venture lending peaked during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early part of this decade, but is making a comeback as startups use debt to pay for computer servers, telecom gear, and software. “The last thing the entrepreneur wants to do is see those precious equity dollars flowing into equipment purchases,” says TriplePoint CEO Jim Labe. “It’s a very unproductive use of equity to plow it into fixed assets.”

Forrester Research’s Gillett estimates that Google is buying half a million servers each year, while Microsoft’s annual consumption is as much as 200,000 servers.

Executives at Facebook declined to say which vendors will provide the servers. But the social network is already a big customer of Rackable Systems, which said in a recent financial statement that it derived $11.5 million, or 17% of $68 million in first-quarter revenue, from Facebook. This puts the total server expenditures of Facebook at $46M per year. With the new round this amount will significantly increase.

Facebook is hugely popular social networking site, second only to MySpace in terms of users. Other popular social networking sites are Bebo and Friendster, the second one tried to acquire Facebook in 2004 for just $10M.

The latest comScore metrics, we have seen, revealed that Facebook is actually havingo ver 100M unique visitors per month.

Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and managing partner of the Founders Fund was the first angel investor in the company. He invested $500,000 into Facebook in early 2004. Later Accel Partners poured $12.7 million more in funding, at a valuation in the $100 million range.

The next year [2006], Facebook received $25 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital, as well as returning investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel. The pre-money valuation for this deal was in the $525 million range.

Facebook is reported to have turned deals down from Friendster, Yahoo, Viacom and the mighty Google a few months ago when Zuckerberg has chosen Microsoft to partner with. Microsoft de-facto has invested $240 million into Facebook for just 1.6 percent of the company in October 2007. This put the company’s valuation at over $15 billion on just $150 million in annual revenues.

http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.tpcp.com/
http://www.rackable.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/10/facebook-raises-another-100-million/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc2008059_855064.htm
http://mashable.com/2008/05/09/facebook-triplepoint-funding/
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/09/facebook-borrows-100m-to-build-out-its-infrastructure/
http://gigaom.com/2008/05/11/the-rising-cost-of-facebook-infrastructure/
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/hong-kong-tycoon-li-raises/story.aspx?guid=%7BE4097AA2-9EA3-4773-9100-456E68EE1C9A%7D
http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/03/facebook-gets-another-40-million/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/hong-kong-billionaire-puts-another-40-million-into-facebook/
http://mashable.com/2008/03/27/facebook-hutchinson-investment/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2007/11/30/hong-kong-billionaire-li-ka-shing-invests-60m-in-facebook-funding-totals-33820m-to-date/
http://gigaom.com/2008/03/27/facebook-soon-to-appear-in-3g/
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2915120374&b
http://gigaom.com/2008/03/13/lets-justify-facebooks-300-per-user-valuation/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/facebook
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/30/another-60-million-for-facebook/
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071130/facebook-nabs-60-million-investment-from-li-ka-shing/
http://www.hutchison-whampoa.com/eng/about/chairman/chairman.htm

Live Universe acquires yet another over funded start-up on the cheap

Web 2.0 Innovations — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:55:14 +0000

It appears that the buyer’s profile of Live Universe is to buy web 2.0 companies in trouble on the cheap, yet preferably over funded, with some traffic and good technology, if possible. After they have bought video site Revver (also relatively cheap, price perhaps was in the $1M range) in February 2008, they have also fetched up Pageflakes just the last month for what is believed to be yet another 1M dollar deal. Yesterday we have read over Web that Live Universe has this time bought yet another start-up falling into the same profile (over funded, failed and looking for a fire sale) MeeVee. They have put themselves up for sale via press release the last month.

MeeVee is all about personalized TV guides and the company was said is having over 1.1 million organic unique users in March up from 480,000 in August 2007. The Company uses its editorial voice and proprietary technology to scour a curated list of thousands of sources to connect consumers with customized video, blog and TV programming content that matches their interests. The Company has significant issued IP, community, media relationships, a TV listings personalization engine, streaming TV directory and a compelling product roadmap. The Company has 7 full time employees, all in product and engineering.

Let’s look into the Live Universe’s shopping pattern.

Total funding for Pageflakes was $4.1M – sold out for what is known to be in the $1M range. Total funding for Revver is known to be in the $12.7M range coming from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III – sold also out for anything between $1M and $2M. MeeVee itself has also taken a whopping amount of money from the venture capitalists — $25M over the past years, we bet on it has also been sold out for anything in the $1M / $2M range. From the 3 companies above, MeeVee seems to have traffic, at least.

It is an interesting strategy to buy companies and spur growth, but we guess it is better you buy growing start-ups rather than falling stars that have spent enormous amount of capital yet did not work things out. It is yet to be seen if this strategy is going to be successful on the long term run for Live Universe. Let’s put it that way - a company that has raised $25M and did not manage to work things out is less likely to make it with less money. On the other hand buying distressed assets is something proven by the time. From Live Universe’s perspective it seems clever move that they have bought web assets that needed more than $42M to develop for $3M or something. As web 2.0 moves towards its peak and then its end (the same as what happened with the dot com boom) there would be lots of over funded and over hyped, but failed start-ups for sale on the table for Live Universe to choose from and buy cheaply.

So to conclude if your company has taken enormous amount of money, but has definitely failed to work things out and is looking for some liquidation of its assets Live Universe might be your choice to consider.

Additionally in 2006, Greenspan also initiated a lawsuit and activism site against his former company, MySpace, calling attention to the fact they were censoring widget makers and software service providers using MySpace as a development platform.

http://www.liveuniverse.com/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/liveuniverse
http://meevee.com/
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080407/20080407006076.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/07/25-million-later-meevee-in-trouble/
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/meevee
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/16/meevee-cuts-20-of-staff/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/20/meevee-takes-35-million-series-d/
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=17395
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_Feb_27/ai_n16085490
http://www.techmeme.com/080407/p95#a080407p95
http://www.deftapartners.com/
http://www.labrador.com/
http://www.waldenvc.com/
http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/investbk/global/na/baef
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/02/15/revver-the-video-revenue-sharing-site-finally-sells-out-but-the-price-is-not-hefty/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/04/15/pageflakes-is-acquired-by-brad-greenspan%e2%80%99s-live-universe/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/02/15/revver-the-video-revenue-sharing-site-finally-sells-out-but-the-price-is-not-hefty/
http://web2innovations.com/money/2008/04/08/meevee-put-itself-up-for-sale/

LinkedIn is out pitching for a major round at the staggering $1B pre-money

Web 2.0 Innovations — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:29:03 +0000

The rumors across the valley are that LinkedIn is out trying to raise a new round at $1B pre-money valuation. They are using the service of the New York based secretive investment bank Allen & Co. where the Managing Director Dave Wehner seems to be engaged with the effort to help LinkedIn secure its next round of funding.

There were clearly rumors over the past months that LinkedIn was looking for potential sell out as one of the rumored suitors was News Corp., but as it often happens nowadays after you fail to sell out you are raising a new round instead at preferably huge pre-money valuation to keep your company alive until IPO and M&A markets improve. Similar deals were done by many web 2.0 start-ups from the valley and among others are Slide, Ning, Federated Media and most recently Meebo.

If those rumors turn out to be accurate it will be one of the most expensive private venture deals in recent history. So far LinkedIn is said to have taken $27.5M in total over three rounds. They have also claimed publicly they will reach anything between $70M and $100 million in revenue in 2008. Yet if this is true that they need new round before their exit it means they are barely profitable.

The latest numbers from LinkedIn are as follows: over 20M registered users worldwide, more than 1M new users get registered on their social networking site each month and the average user is said to be 41 years old making around $110,000, which the company says allows it to charge advertisers $75 per thousand impressions.

However, both Quantcast and Compete do report for no more than 4 up to 5M uniques per month to their site.

This past January, cofounder and board chairman Reid Hoffman told the Sydney Morning Herald that the company will most likely file for an IPO before 2010 if “he isn’t first tempted to sell to one of the suitors that have inquired about buying LinkedIn. Hoffman wouldn’t identify the suitors.” This simply sounds like invitation for the suitors to sweeten their offers.

More about LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries. When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.

Through your network you can:

Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
Be found for business opportunities
Search for great jobs
Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
Post and distribute job listings
Find high-quality passive candidates
Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know

LinkedIn is free to join. We also offer paid accounts that give you more tools for finding and reaching the right people, whether or not they are in your network.

LinkedIn participates in the EU Safe Harbor Privacy Framework and is certified to meet the strict privacy guidelines of the European Union. All relationships on LinkedIn are mutually confirmed, and no one appears in the LinkedIn Network without knowledge and explicit consent.

LinkedIn is located in Mountain View, California and is funded by world-class investors including Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

More about Allen & Co

Investment bank Allen & Company has been involved in a number of high profile mergers and acquisitions in the past. Interesting for the Allen & Company is the privacy the investment firm seems to be working in as argument for which is the absence of even a basic site for the company on Web. Perhaps they don’t like publicity. Yet, we have found the firm’s contact details, which can be found among the other links on the end of the story’s page.

For Allen & Company, there’s no business like financing show business. The investment bank serves variously as investor, underwriter, and broker to some of the biggest names in entertainment, technology, and information. Viewed as something of a secret society, the firm has had a quiet hand in such hookups as Seagram (now part of Vivendi) and Universal Studios, Hasbro and Galoob Toys, and Disney and Capital Cities/ABC. The firm’s famous annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, attracts more moguls than a double-black ski run (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and eBay CEO Meg Whitman have attended). Brothers Herbert and Charles Allen founded the company in 1922.

Key people and executives for Allen & Company LLC are as follows:

Non-Executive Chairman Donald R. (Don) Keough
President, CEO, and Director Herbert A. (Herb) Allen
Managing Director and CFO Kim M. Wieland

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http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/05/allen-co-pitching-linkedin-at-1-billion/
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http://quantcast.com/linkedin.com
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Meebo raised $25M on reportedly $200M pre-money

Web 2.0 Innovations — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:35:01 +0000

The rumors were lately that Meebo failed to sell and that’s why it went into this new round of funding instead and not at the initial $250M pre-money valuation they were hoping for but at $175 - $200M (as it seems $200M). Some sources claim that companies like Fox/MySpace and AOL have taken a long look at the company, but ultimately passed based on the price.

A couple of days ago it went official that Meebo has taken a $25 million third round of financing from Jafco Ventures, Time Warner Investments and KTB Ventures. Previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Sequoia Capital are said to have also participated.

With this round Meebo’s only exit might be the IPO road, which for a company with little to no revenues is not that easy to accomplish. If the new investors are looking for 2x or 3x their money at the exit it would be hard for Meebo to sell itself out for anything less than $500M or go for an IPO, which for a company with little to no revenues is kind of unbelievable for us to happen.

Meebo is a popular and rapidly growing web based instant messaging start up that was backed up by Sequoia Capital and is said to have roughly 4.6M unique visitors per month according to comScore’s publicly available stats. That’s valuing each of their visitors at the $54 mark, which is significantly more than what AOL has just recently paid for each of Bebo’s 22M visitors - $39 according our simple math. Many industry experts, commentators and bloggers have expressed their negative feelings about the potential deal and more concrete about its pre-money valuation. Anyone remember Slide and their pre-money valuation of $500M? Yet it was said then they had over 150M or so users worldwide, which, if true, valued their users at the $3 range.

There is however something most of the technology blogs seem to have overlooked. Joshua Beil from Level 3 Communications has commented on one of the tech blogs that Meebo’s per user valuation could change quite substantially if one takes into account their unique visitors of the MeeboMe rooms widget. I’ve seen, he says, numbers in the 10-14M range and counting for just this application. Factor this in to the 4.6M uniques to Meebo.com and it’s at a discount to Bebo. We have no idea where he does take his numbers and what his affiliation with the company is, but if we take those numbers for real the $250M valuation does not sound ridicules anymore. In addition to that Venturebeat reports that Meebo has attracted 29 million monthly unique users worldwide, but they also say that some investors remain quite skeptical about Meebo and their business model. We have no clear idea where Venturebeat has come to that number of visitors.

Meebo launched in September 2005 and received funding from Sequoia Capital in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in January 2007. Today, Meebo’s users exchange over 100 million instant messages daily.In early 2007, Meebo gets another $9 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Sequoia Capital. Skype’s lead investor and YouTube’s lead investor are teaming up. Tim Draper, one of the early investors in Skype, did the deal for DFJ. Meebo’s total funding is now $37.5 million.

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