Veoh Takes $26 million Round C
P2P and web video sharing service Veoh has taekn $26million in Round C funding. The new money takes total investment in Veoh to $41.25million. The pre money valuation is rumored to be between $60 million and $70 million.
DeviantArt Raises $3.5M in Series A Funding
DeviantArt has reportedly raised $3.5 million in Series A funding, with DivX Inc. as a listed shareholder. The artists community was founded in 2000, and has over 1 million unique visitors a day. It's long been a popular network for artists including photographers, painters and animators.
StudioNow Raises $1.5M in Funding
StudioNow, the video editing service, has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Claritas Capital. Others participating in the round are Fred Goad and Jim Kever, the founders of Envoy. Funding will be used for marketing purposes and technology development and operations.
SmartSheet Raises $2.69M in Funding
SmartSheet , the web-based spreadsheet creation service, has raised $2.69 million in a Series A-4 of funding, led by Madrona Venture Group. SmartSheet, which won Business 2.0's Best of Show award earlier this year, has a good management team, some members hailing from Onyx Software.
PermissionTV Gets $9M in Third Round of Funding
PermissionTV , an online video platform for creating branded Internet television channels, has closed on its third round of funding for $9 million. The round was led by Castile Ventures and Point Judith Capital. Existing investors include Common Angels, CramerOnline, inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors and the Venture Capital Fund of New England, bringing the total amount raised for PermissionTV to $18 million.
Lijit to Close on $3.3M in Second Round of Funding
Lijit, the personal network search tool, reportedly has plans to close on a $3.3 million venture round this month. The company had already raised $900,000 in venture capital and angel funds earlier this year (covered here), with investors including Colorado Fund, Brad Feld, Seth Goldstein and Paul Berberian. It also landed a partnership with Feedburner to provide search services for Feedburner's network.
Kyte Gets Investment from Nokia
Kyte, the video-sharing and distribution site, has received investment from Nokia Growth Partners for an undisclosed amount. See our initial review of Kyte here. The deal hits at an upcoming mobile distribution strategy for the video content, which is designed to offer more control from the user and a way of broadcasting multimedia content across the web.
PodZinger, Now EveryZing, Raises $10M in Funding
PodZinger, the search engine for podcasts and videos, has been renamed EveryZing, and has raised $10 million in funding led by Fairhavent Capital, Accel and General Catalyst, bringing the company's total funding amount to $15 million.
Rifftrax Acquires Cuts
About four months since launch, web video editor Cuts.com has been acquired by Rifftrax, a site featuring DVD commentary by Michael J. Nelson of MST3K. No word on the price. The online video editing space has become increasingly competitive. Click.tv recently joined the deadpool, with plans to reorganize.
Openads Opensource project Raises $5 million
Openads, the developer of a popular seven year old opensource ad server, have spun out of London based ad network Unanimis and raised $5 million in capital to fund their business. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Index Ventures' Saul Klein joined the company's board of directors. Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital also mentioned their investment it on his personal blog.
Team and Concepts Raises $1.25million Series A
Team and Concepts Limited, the Hong Kong based company behind online spreadsheet service EditGrid, has announced a $1.25 million Series A investment from the WI Harper Group. WI Harper's previous investments include Laszlo Systems and Maxthon.
Me.dium Lands $15M in Funding
Me.dium, the social browser add-on, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding, bringing its funding to total $20 million, and coming from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, Appian Ventures, Brad Feld and Elon Musk. Read here for our initial review.
ESPN acquires Cricinfo website
Leading cricket website Cricinfo has been acquired by ESPN as part of the US broadcaster's push to grow its global presence in online sports reporting. The site, much loved by statistics-obsessed cricket fans across the world, has been bought from The Wisden Group, publishers of the sport's 'bible' the annual Wisden Cricketers Almanac, for an undisclosed fee.
PayPerPost Raises $7 million More
Controversial pay-per-post startup PayPerPost has raised $7 million in a second round of financing, bringing their total raised capital to just over $10 million. Like their previous round from last October the financing was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures. New investor DFJ Gotham, a fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated.
CBS Invests in TicketReserve, Plans to Integrate On and Offline
CBS has announced its investment in TicketReserve, the online marketplace offering consumers the option to purchase advanced tickets to events at face value. TicketReserve lets you buy tickets for a specific team, artist or event, guaranteeing them the ability to get tickets at face-value, with a FanForward reservation.
ThisNext Raises Round of Venture Debt
ThisNext, the shopping and discovery website, has raised a round of venture debt for an undisclosed amount. The round was backed by Western Technology, Inc. See our initial review of ThisNext here. This round of funding will go directly towards an extension prior to the company's Series B funding in the fall, giving ThisNext a better position to boost valuation in preparation of raising additional funds.
MeetMoi Gets $1.5M in Funding
MeetMoi, the mobile dating site, has raised $1.5 million in funding in its first round of financing.The funding was provided by Acadia Woods Partners. MeetMoi is a service that operates in a similar manner to Dodgeball or Rabble, where you can find someone in your local proximity to meet up with you right now. But with MeetMoi, you can find a date, not just an existing friend.
Amazon May Be Looking To Acquire Netflix
Netflix stock jumped up 5.66% today on rumors that the company may be in acquisition talks with by Amazon. The funny thing about public company rumors: when they affect stock prices, it becomes AP-reported news...
FameCast Raises $4.5M in Funding
FameCast, the online talent show, has raised $4.5 million in funding from Austin Ventures. FameCast hands out $10,000 in cash prizes to the winner of each of its twelve 'stage' contests, spanning art genres such as spoken word, animation, and stand-up comedy, along with the expected music categories for Pop, Country, R&B, etc. Contestants submit videos of their work to their respected 'stage'. Users vote for who they like best, and the contests last for an entire 'season'. FameCast's recent funding will go towards expanding its marketing efforts in the U.S. and around the world.
PeakStream Trail Leads To Google
Google's acquisitions are usually pretty smooth deals; at most, a 'welcome, Google!' statement shows up on the lucky company's homepage. Now, a report indicates that PeakStream has been bought by Google, yet the company no longer even has a front page - the whole site is gone.
Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint
Scribd, dubbed the 'YouTube for Documents', was the dark horse of their Y Combinator class, but the social document sharing site now gives its critics pause to think. Since launching, traffic to the site scaled quickly to 75-100,000 uniques per day with a little help from popular link aggregation sites like Digg. This past month they logged 1.73 million unique visitors. Today Kinsey Hills is back, investing another $210,000 alongside $3.5 million from Redpoint, with Geoffrey Yang joining the company's board.
VCs re-up SocialText
SocialText, a startup that makes collaborative wiki platforms for enterprises, has raised $3 million toward a $6.5 million Series C venture financing, according to a regulatory filing. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP and the Omidiyar Network, from which it has already raised $3 million in its Series B. Other backers include tech executives Mark Pincus, CEO of Tribe.net which sold the majority of its assets to Cisco earlier this year, Reid Hoffman, the Chairman of LinkedIn.
Slacker Gets $40 Million for Growth
When Slacker initially launched their three prong web, desktop, and portable music service, we felt they needed a lot of cash in the bank to take on incumbents like Last.fm and iTunes. It looks like they got that start, with the addition of a whopping $40 million investment on top of the original $13.5 million series A funding, according to PEHub. Centennial Ventures and Rho Ventures were new investors, with Austin Ventures, Mission Ventures, and Sevin Rosen Funds returning.
Keibi Takes $6 million Series B Funding
San Francisco-based Keibi Technologies has raised around $6 million in Series B funding from Catamount Ventures and Hunt Ventures.
It's Official: Google Buys Feedburner
Last week's rumored acquisition of Feedburner by Google has been confirmed. Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo announced the acquisition with his usual flare and humor proclaiming, 'FeedBurner has been acquired by Google. The local weather forecast calls for general euphoria with intermittent periods of off-the-rails delight.'
Biyani bullish about shopping portal
Kishore Biyani may be just a mouse click away from raising big money for his online shopping portal. His business of the future, Futurebazaar.com is in talks to rope in private equity funds Sequoia and Carlyle. Sources have told NDTV that Pantaloon retail, which owns 100 per cent in Futurebazaar.com will sell 10-15 per cent stake in the portal.
Bring Out Your Dead: Respectance Wins Funding For Eulogy Social Network
San Francisco and Kracow Poland-based Respectance says it has raised $250K in venture capital funding, and is due to announce another round next month, having secured the backing of a large Dutch VC group. Advertising might not be appropriate so Respectance.com will charge $1 for each funeral video downloaded.
Multiverse Gets $4 Million in Funding
Multiverse, the virtual world-based platform which has been around for quite a while now, has received just over $4 million in funding from Sterling Stamos Capital Management . The folks at Multiverse, some of which have worked on Netscape in its glory days, say they're gonna use the money to get more staff and to finally get their product out of beta stage. They plan to launch a consumer network of games and virtual worlds later this year or early 2008.
Google agrees to acquire Panoramio
We are very (and we mean very) happy to announce that Panoramio will be acquired by Google. The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence.
CBS to buy social network Last.fm
It is expected to pay $280 million for the Last.fm site, which caters to music fans. CBS Corp. is buying a popular social networking website organized around musical tastes for $280 million, combining a traditional broadcast giant with an early leader in online radio. CBS is expected to announce today that it has acquired London-based Last.fm, which claims more than 15 million monthly users, including more than 4 million in the U.S.
Mozilla Invests in Democracy TV
Mozilla has invested in the non profit, Participatory Culture Foundation, the makers of the Democracy Player , which is soon to be renamed Miro. Terms for this investment were not disclosed. Mozilla feels that Miro aligns with the goals of innovative options for the Internet that it's been dedicated to since its onset.
Google Acquires GreenBorder - First Step Towards Google Antivirus?
Google's acquisition spree shows no signs of stopping: now the company has acquired Mountain View-based GreenBorder, which creates security software. It's an interesting idea: the software creates a kind of sandbox for your web browsing, so that any viruses, spyware and trojans you pick up during your session are deleted as soon as the browser is closed.
Jajah Announces Deutsche Telekom As Second Series C Investor
Earlier this month we announced VOIP startup Jajah had accepted $20 million in series C investment from Intel Capital . Tonight, Jajah has announced that they've added a co-lead to the round: Deutsche Telekom (T-mobile). The initial news of the investment was rushed out by Intel with Deutsche Telekom holding off announcement of their investment until today. Deutsche Telekom's investment in Jajah marks the first investment of a telco in one of the VoIP startups.
Skype Founders Invest in Frenzoo
Ambient Sound Investments, a company established by the four co-founding engineers of Skype, have invested in the Hong Kong based 3D social networking company Frenzoo as part of a Series A round of investment aimed at expanding the service through out Asia. ASI owners include Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn, Senior Developers at Skype, Ahti Heinla, Chief Architect at Skype and Toivo Annu, a former Skype Head of Engineering.
Buzznet Lands $6 Million
Social media network Buzznet today announced the closure of a $6 million round of financing led by Redpoint Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners. Buzznet is the largest social networking site you've possibly never heard of.
Sequoia Leads Trulia's $10 Million Series C
Real estate search engine Trulia joins an elite Silicon Valley Club today with the announcement of $10m Series C funding in a round headed by Sequoia Capital. Trulia moved out of beta earlier this month and launched a number of new features. Sequoia is joined in the funding round by previous investors Accel and Fayez Sarofim & Co. The $10m takes Trulia's total funding to $17.7million. The new money is being used for additional staff, product development and a new marketing push.
$100 Million Payday For Feedburner - This Deal Is Confirmed
Rumors about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.
Google takes stake in genomics info startup
Google Inc. has taken a small stake in a biotech company that was co-founded by the wife of one of Google's founders, Sergey Brin, Google said in a U.S. regulatory filing on Tuesday. Google said it had invested $3.9 million in the company, called 23andMe Inc., giving the Mountain View, California-based Google a minority stake in the start-up, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Blinkx IPO Goes Ahead
The promised Blinkx IPO went ahead on London's AIM index today, with the online video search provider opening at 45p and closing at 63p. AIM is a sub-market to the London Stock Exchange. The creation of Blinkx PLC ( BLNX ) was the result of a tricky series of moves from UK-based data search company Autonomy - one of our commenters earned a free pony for explaining the scenario is plain English, but unfortunately couldn't afford the $10,000 'handling fee'.
Facebook Platform: The Road to IPO?
This week the Wall Street journal published an excellent piece on the upcoming Facebook Platform, which Josh also covered for Read/WriteWeb. The WSJ article outlined a Facebook platform that will allow companies to offer their products and services to Facebook users, enabling them to tap into Facebook's large network. With widgets (which can plug into networks like Facebook) getting more popular, this is welcome news to many startups - and probably e-commerce giants too. If the rumors are true, this hot startup has decided to fight off the billion dollar acquisition offers and make a run for the holy grail of the (still recovering) tech world - the IPO.
Clupedia gets $1.3 million
Santa Ana, CA, based startup Clupedia announced that it has raised $1.3 million in funding from Tech Coast Angels, a group of 270 investors in Orange County. Clupedia's founder David Saad claims that he has put down $2.3 million of his own money into startup. David Saad is a serial entrepreneur who had previously founded Braintec that was sold to Technisource. To add weight to the startup's story, Johannes Larcher sits on Clupedia's board. James had served as VP of Friendster and prior to that he was the chief of staff at Overture, which Yahoo bought in 2003 for nearly $2 billion.
Confirmed: CBS Acquires Wallstrip
Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon confirmed the deal on his blog on Monday - presenter Lindsay Campbell and producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks will become full-time employees of CBS, says Gigaom . The show had raised $600,000 from angels and friends, including Fred Wilson and Brad Feld. It's a great exit for Wallstrip, and may give hope to other videoblogs that want to make the leap.
Second Life Acquires Winward Mark for More Realistic Game Play
Linden Lab, parent company of Second Life, announced today its acquisition of graphics technology from Windward Mark Interactive, for an undisclosed amount. From the deal, Linden Lab will acquire WindLight, an atmospheric-rendering technology, Nimble, a 3D cloud simulator, and associated intellectual property and interests.
The Travel Channel Acquires Travel Blog for Editorial Content
The online component for the Travel Channel announces today that it has acquired World Hum, an online travel magazine blog, for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Travel Channel visitors will be able to access exclusive content from World Hum's editors and contributors.
Google, Salesforce.com Weigh Alliance to Battle Microsoft
Internet giant Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., a pioneer in online services for businesses, are discussing an alliance that could help them compete more effectively with Microsoft Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.
Yahoo's Rumored $1 billion Talks With Bebo
Rumors about social networking site Bebo being for sale come up every few months. First it was British Telecom for $550 million in July 2006 (we started that one), then the Financial Times reported they were in talks with Viacom a month later.
Naturally Curly Raises $600,000 in Funding
Naturally Curly, the online community for people with curly hair founded in 1998, has raised $600,000 in a round of funding led by James Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers, a computer manufacturer which was bought by Compaq in 1997.
Rumour: Google to buy Feedburner
I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the acquisition deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal. If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.
Microsoft to buy Web ad firm aQuantive for $6 bln
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it would acquire aQuantive Inc. for about $6 billion, or $66.50 a share, an 85 percent premium to the online advertising company's closing price on Thursday. Shares of aQuantive shot to $63.95 in pre-opening trade, following news of the deal. The all-cash deal tops a dramatic one-month consolidation spree across the online advertising market sparked when Google Inc. agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
Calacanis, who is starting a new company called Kokua (scroll down) , has gotten funding from Sequoia
The Insider has learned that Jason Calcanis' stealth start-up backed by Sequoia Capital has closed on a round of funding from Sequoia, News Corporation and CBS. The undisclosed funding is interesting. Two strategic investors and the hottest Silly-con valley VC.
Fabrik raises $24.9M more for file storage and sharing
Fabrik, a company that offer online storage and easy sharing of big files, has just closed a $24.9 million funding deal and added Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive Media, to the board. Its financing came primarily from 3i, with a small chunk from ComVentures.
Warner Music Group Corp. sued Imeem Inc., a music-based social networking Web site
Warner Music Group Corp. sued Imeem Inc., a music-based social networking site, on Tuesday for infringing the copyright of its artists including Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day. In a suit filed at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Warner accused Imeem of building a base of 16 million users by capitalizing on the 'illegal use of free music.'
WPP Acquires 24/7 Real Media for $649m
Online advertising services firm 24/7 Real Media is to be acquired by the WPP group for $649 million. The old time internet advertising firm had its origins serving ads for Yahoo! and Netscape in 1994 and was formerly founded the following year as Real Media. After numerous acquisitions it took its current name and grew to have 20 offices in 12 countries, serving over 200 billion advertising impressions every month.
Club Penguin In Acquisition Talks With Sony For $500+ million
It's been rumored for a while that Montgomery & Co. is representing virtual world Club Penguin in a sale transaction. It looks like the company is locked in talks, possibly exclusive, with Sony, and the price is 'at least half a billion' says a source close to the deal.
AOL Acquires ADTECH AG
AOL announced today that it has acquired a controlling interest in ADTECH AG, a leading international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany. The acquisition provides AOL with an advanced ad-serving platform that includes an array of ad management and delivery applications enabling website publishers to manage, traffic and report on their online advertising campaigns.
mTracks Gets Funded, Launches Beta Site
mTraks, the online music community and digital music marketplace, announces its public beta launch and the $550,000 it has raised in angel funding represented by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati.
Veotag Gets $750K in Angel Funding
Veotag, the video tagging service, has raised $750,000 from professional angel investors. See our initial review of Veotag here. Veotag's deep tagging service lets you create an interactive table of contents for your video clips, perfect for finding the exact portion of the video you're looking for.
MySpace To Acquire Flektor
MySpace will acquire Flektor, a just-launched service that allows users to create widgets from photos, video and text, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. This comes right after the news of MySpace's pending acquisition of Photobucket last week for $250-$300 million. This will be a much smaller deal, in the $10-$20 million range, possibly with an earnout.
Stockalicious raises $50k in funding
5 months old Singapore based startup Stockalicious is claiming that it has raised $50K in funding from angel investors. The startup enables users to keep track stocks, create portfolio, compare their portfolio performance against the market, and provides a embed code for portfolio to bring it up blogs and websites. Stockalicious currently supports Nasdaq, NYSE, AMEX and OTCBB.
Wordpress.com To Celebrate 1 millionth Blog
Wordpress says that the one millionth blog will be created on the wordpress.com platform sometime next week, which also happens to be their 4 year launch anniversary. Last August the site had just 300,000 blogs , 1.6 million daily page views and 14.2 million unique monthly visitors. CEO Toni Schneider says they now have 7.5 million daily page views and 45 million unique monthly visitors.
Kyte Gets More Funding from Swiss Telecom Provider
Kyte, the online video-sharing and broadcasting website, has just announced new investors, telecommunications provider Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures, which have invested in Kyte for an undisclosed amount. Swisscom and Holtzbrink Ventures is the venture capital arm of one of Germany's most influential media companies.
IMified Acquires Real-Time Feed Alerts Leader Feedcrier.com
We're very happy to finally announce the acquisition of Feedcrier.com, the leading provider of IM based feed alerts. This one has been in the making for some time now, and we officially welcome Adam Kalsey and the Feedcrier community to IMified.
Cork'd Acquired by Wine Library Vlogger
Cork'd , the social networking site for wine lovers, is being acquired by a team led by Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library , and includes Erik Kastner of Rails, for an undisclosed amount. Cork'd has a reported 20,000 members, and provides a space for you to rate and review wines you've tasted. You can make a wine wish list of sorts, and track those you'd like to try as well as purchase.
Swedish Game Site Power Challenge Raises $8 Million From Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital put $8 million to work with Swedish game site Power Challenge, the company will announce today. Power Challenge is a rich Internet application - a game that runs in java and plays very much like a video game. Users build and customize their teams and play against others for points and status. The quality of game play is high and is designed to push the boundaries between traditional PC gaming and online gaming.
Amazon Acquires dpreview.com
Amazon have announced the acquisition of the digital camera information and review site dpreview.com. UK based dpreview.com was founded in 1998 by Phil Askey as a site that publishes 'unbiased reviews and original content regarding the latest in digital cameras, and offers a host of features and forums designed to make it easy for consumers to find the camera that's right for them'.
CBS Acquires WallStrip for $5 million
Jossip is reporting that corporate focused video blog WallStrip has been acquired by CBS News for $5 million. The report states that an announcement is expected early this week and involves WallStrip host Lindsay Campbell being the next Amanda Congdon for CBS, fronting online shows. I spoke to some one close to the deal who confirmed Jossip's story. He told me that New York based Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson, who had previously invested $500,000 in WallStrip, negotiated and sealed the deal. The deal is said to be focused on signing Lindsay Campbell. CBS was keen to have Campbell on board and a cast iron contract meant that acquiring WallStrip was the only way they could get to her.
Mogulus Gets $1.2M in Angel Funding
Mogulus, the online video company aiming to make you all the next Justin.tv rock star, has raised $1.2 in angel funding, including $1 million from a New York-based Swiss private investor. The video broadcasting site is currently in private beta, and their differentiating factor is their ability to mix videos in real time for the creation of your own live broadcast.
JAJAH Lands $20 million Series C Funding From Intel
VOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel. Previous TechCrunch coverage here. As part of the deal Intel will provide JAJAH access to their community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, as well as access to Intel's range of VOIP patents.
videoNEXT Secures $5.4M in Series B Financing
CHANTILLY, Va., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- videoNEXT Network Solutions, Inc., a developer of innovative security management solutions, today announced that it has closed $5.4 million in series B financing and has appointed Joseph Costa as its president and chief executive officer. Christopher Gettings will continue in the role of chairman and assume responsibilities for business development for federal customers and strategic partners.
Encyclopedia of Life: Better Than Wikipedia? Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million.
Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million, Encyclopedia of Life aims to be an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on earth. Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort. Tens of thousands of citizen scientists with expertise around the world are responsible for the creation of content.
Google Searches for Mergers Big and Small
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc. has become more comfortable doing big acquisitions but still sees small technology deals as its primary thrust for buying businesses, its chief executive said on Thursday. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters at a briefing at Google headquarters that the Web search leader remained open to buying larger companies, as it has done twice in recent months, but that these were meant to plug holes in businesses.
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