An icon of old web tech is sold... Tom's hardware goes for $15-20 million
Raise your hand if you have been to Tom's Hardware. Yep, we all have at one time or another. I remember using that site bigtime back in the mid to late 90s. It (along with Anand) was the best for tech help and finding out if the latest processor was a hit or a miss. I am not sure if it because I left the early-adopter, hardcore pc builder segment, or if new sites cropped up and were less overwhelmed with ads, but I don't find myself visiting Tom's that much anymore. I am not even sure if I have been there in 2007.
A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead
A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a 'media company' instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?
Google Takes Partial Ownership Of Maxthon Browser
Multiple sources are confirming that the Chinese/Israeli startup behind the Maxthon Browser has sold a minority stake to Google. The total investment size is rumored to be around $1 million. We are also hearing that this investment is part of a 'much larger strategic deal' between the two companies.
Why to link words in your text and point them to LinkedWords.com?
We ( EPR Network ) are using a web 2.0 contextual platform called LinkedWords.com for quite long time now and here we'd like to give our 2 cents on why you would also want to link words in your text and point them to LinkedWords? First off, doing contextual links with third party sites is always found to be helpful in increasing the overall visibility and popularity of your site as well as if the links are quality and relevant enough it helps in driving more targeted visitors to your site. But LinkedWords.com takes the extra mile in that process and significantly increases the effectiveness of linking between sites on a contextual level. Simply said: LinkedWords.com maximizes contextual linking between sites through strategic linked words.
Google Launches Free 411 Service
Google threw a new product called Goog-411 into Google Labs today - a free telephone based information service that could replace toll 411 calls. About 2.6 billion 411 calls (directory assistance) are made in the U.S. each year, and it is a $7 billion/year market.
Mobile Web 2.0 by UCLA WINMEC on May 2, 2007
UCLA-WINMEC is hosting the Mobile Web 2.0 Forum on May 2, 2007. The next generation of the Mobile Web - Web 2.0 - is expected to vastly expand the scope of media content generation and consumption by allowing one or more mobile internet users to singly or jointly create and consume content. The forum will address such challenges arising as a result of Mobile Web 2.0 in the Convergence of Content, Devices and Networks for Consumer and Enterprise Spaces. The forum will bring together a panel of experts from Media/entertainment organizations, Content Aggregators, Network Providers, Infrastructure Organizations and Enterprises. For more information please contact infor@winmec.ucla.edu
UCLA-WINMEC (Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium) will be holding its Mobile Convergence Web 2.0 Forum
UCLA-WINMEC (Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium) will be holding its Mobile Convergence Web 2.0 Forum that will discuss Content, Devices and Networks that come together to allow Convergence and Web 2.0 on Mobile Devices, on May 2, 2007
Weblo Making Millions?
Weblo is a virtual real estate site with social networking features that most of us labeled pointless. In Business 2.0 this week, however, the company claims that it will pull in $2 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2007, and $10 million in revenue by the end of 2007 - figures that sound insane to most analysts.
RIPL Funded For Facebook Follower?
Try as we might, we can't get access to RIPL , the college social network that's currently in closed beta and open only to students at the University of Washington and the University of Central Florida. We first spotted the site back in November 2006, and the Seattle-based company has now raised $2M in Series A funding. The site provides photo and music sharing.
Ozon.ru, Russia's Amazon.com, Gets $18M Investment For Expansion
Ozon.ru, which claims to be Russia's largest e-commerce store for books, audio and video, software, multimedia games, electronic and digital goods, received $18 million in funding this week from Index Ventures, Holtzbrinck Ventures (the venture arm of one of Germany's largest publishing companies) and Cisco. The money will help develop Ozon.ru's logistics system, expand its product lines and establish new distribution centers across Russia. The investment round was initiated and managed by Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Russia's leading private equity investor and controlling shareholder of Ozon.
DoubleClick Advertising Exchange - Could Lead To Google / Yahoo / Microsoft Showdown
DoubleClick plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. The system is described as follows: DoubleClick, based in New York, views the exchange as the centerpiece of a growth plan and may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years, said David Rosenblatt, the company's chief executive, said in an interview yesterday. 'We already have the largest sellers and the largest buyers,' he said. 'This will link them for the first time.'
Marketing in Second Life doesn't work... here is why!
Last week, the Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward real world marketing in Second Life. It's been a long time in coming: a British branding agency established a forward operating base in SL back in early 2004 (and for their efforts, were greeted by throngs of sign-waving protesters threatening to boycott their island.)
Yahoo Alpha Search Launches Confusing Beta
Yahoo Australia launched a new personalized search engine called Alpha today. Yahoo has another personalized search product called Yahoo Search Builder meant for customizing a Yahoo search engine for your site. A lot of people are calling Alpha a competitor to Google Coop, but it's not. Yahoo Alpha is a meta search engine with a Netvibes look and feel, letting you type a search in one box and see results amongst several search engines. Google Coop and Rollyo interleave the results from several sources ranked by relevance.
Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
Before we get into it, allow me to back up just a bit. First of all, the "Alternative" in the title refers to "alternatives to Google." That is, one criteria for making it onto the list is to exhibit superiority to Google in one particular feature. For example, TheFind.com is better than Google's Froogle, in my opinion. And that brings me to my second point: the ultimate criteria for inclusion is not empirical, it is subjective. I liken myself to a movie critic - here are 100 movies/search engines that I think you should see. If you go to one and are disappointed, that's okay.
Students give up social networks for Lent
For some, it's chocolate. For others, it's coffee or cigarettes. But as this Easter approaches, some young and devout Christians are anxious to return to what they gave up for Lent: Internet sites Facebook and MySpace. Many users describe the popular social networking sites as addictive, which is why they say giving up these 21st-century temptations is a sincere sacrifice. Members on both sites create profiles and add each other as friends. They can also share messages, photos, videos and personal blogs.
The Outlook for Search in China
Today China boasts over 105 million Internet users, not to mention 350M mobile users (growing by 57 million every year). By 2010, Chinese Internet users will outnumber US Internet users by 25%. Currently, 87% of the Chinese Internet audience uses search. And given Internet search's dominance of monetization and audience rankings globally, the competition for the top spot in the Chinese search market is pretty intense.
MySpace Will Hold Presidential Primary
MySpace has more registered members than the population of Mexico. If it was a country it would be the 11th largest in the world. So while it may be a major marketing event for MySpace to say it's holding a presidential primary next January, you can be sure the candidates will take it seriously. The MySpace primary will be held on January 1 & 2, 2008, before any of the official state primaries. Every user will be asked to vote for their favorite candidate.
Next Service To Try Gaming Digg: Subvert and Profit
Subvert and Profit is the newest service to try to sell home page placement on Digg. Like User/Submitter and Spike the Vote before it (both now offline), the idea is to charge people for a digg vote (in this case, $1 per vote). Digg users can sign up and will receive $.50 every time they digg a story (note: this is in clear violation of the Digg terms and conditions and many users who have joined similar gaming sites have been banned from the Digg).
ComScore Files for $86 Million IPO
Likely to be big news in the stat-tracking sector: ComScore has filed for a $86.25 million IPO today. The company will trade on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol SCOR, and Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities will serve as underwriters. ComScore, based in in Reston, Virginia, launched back in August 1999. It has taken $92 million in VC from (in approximate descending order of the stake size) Accel Partners, JPMorgan, Institutional Venture Partners, Lehman Brothers, Adams Street Partners, Topspin Partners, Flatiron Partners, vSpring Capital, Devine InterVentures and Rembrandt Venture Partners.
Topix Aims For Citizen Journalists
News site Topix.net will relaunch this evening under their newly acquired domain name Topix.com. They are also launching a new product that will allow readers to write and edit local news articles directly. The news was first written about by USA Today this afternoon. Topix is partly funded by USA Today's parent company, Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune.
Synapse Life Sells for $60K
The latest eBayquisition : SynapseLife , a suite of web-based applications that are available on your mobile phone, sold for $60K on eBay in the last few hours. The founders are now switching their focus to Down2Night , a much sexier social app that will soon have integration with MySpace.
Venture capitalists ponder: Is Google passé?
A panel of Silicon Valley investors seeking the next investment wave seizes on companies helping consumers reorganize information from the Web. When a renowned investor suggests that Google, one of Silicon Valley's biggest home runs and the biggest hit on the Internet, is passé, it sort of pricks up your ears.
Is Google Too Powerful?
It's the year 2014, and Googlezon, a fearsomely powerful combination of search engine Google Inc. ( GOOG ) and online store Amazon.com Inc. ( AMZN ), has crushed traditional media to bits. Taking its place is the computer-generated Evolving Personalized Information Construct—an online package of news, entertainment, blogs, and services drawn from all the world's up-to-the-minute knowledge and customized to match your preferences. And it's all collected, packaged, and controlled by Googlezon.
How Much Is Photobucket Worth?
Silicon Valley/Colorado based photo and video sharing site Photobucket has 36 million registered users and adds another 85,000 per day. If the growth rate continues, they'll have 60 million users by the end of the year. More users visit Photobucket each month - 17 million, than Facebook. 56% of those users are under 35, and 52% are female. 300,000 unique websites link back to Photobucket. They move a lot of data.
The Top 10 Underrated Web 2.0 Sites
There are literally thousands of Web 2.0 social bookmarking and news sites on the web these days. Here's the goods ones you may or may not have heard of. Worth a look.
Why Microsoft should buy DoubleClick
NEW YORK (AP) -- Google Inc., expanding its efforts at providing software that helps users create and post their own materials on the Internet, has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis.
WebJam Bags $2 Million for Community of Personalized Pages
London-based WebJam, a community of openly editable personal pages, just raised $2 million from French early-stage VC I-Source Gestion. You can see our earlier coverage here.
FlipTrack Get's $1.5 M for Synching Slide Shows
We covered FlipTrack last November when they launched a beta version of their desktop client, which syncs a photo slide show to music. They're back, with a $1.5 million first round of financing and a new web client. The financing comes from a group angels and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The new investment included some investors in FlipTrack's former parent company, iPlay, makers of music tutorial software for Mac.
MySpace Making $30 Million/Month
In what may be a slight increase to Rupert Murdoch's claim of $25 million/month (which was only ads, not total revenue), analyst Richard Greenfield noted today that MySpace is now generating 'in excess of $30 million' per month in revenue, with about $24 million in US revenue and $6 million internationally.
Xing Acquires eConozco, Prepares for Spanish Invasion
Xing operator Open Business Club AG has acquired eConozco, a fairly large social network for professionals in Spain, it was announced today. The amount was not disclosed.
Xobni, an e-Mail Tracker, Raises $1.5M
Xobni Analytics has just raised $1.5M of a $4.26M Series A round led by Khosla Ventures.
Microsoft Spins Off ZenZui, Mobile Browsing Via Widgets
Microsoft-backed ZenZui launched this morning. It's a new mobile browser that aims to make surfing the web on your mobile device easier through widgets. The application that lets you surf over a 6×6 grid of website widgets by panning and zooming around the grid. Each of the widgets is a mobile optimized version of a website you interact with by zooming into it.
Webwag Acquires Mobease
A scoop over on Mashable France : startpage provider Webwag has acquired Mobease , a widget platform for mobile phones. Launched in 2006, Mobease provides Mobidgets for putting widgets on your phone, and Mobifindit, a search engine that indexes the contents of your mobile handset.
Imbee - Disney Is Investor
Long time, no Imbee. Mashable was one of the first to mention the kid-friendly social network when it launched back in June 2006, and reports this weekend say that Steamboat Ventures, Disney's VC arm, invested $2.5 million in its first Series A round of funding in late 2006. Industrious Kid, the company behind Imbee, launched with $6 million in funding.
Voxpop.tv Gets Angel Funding
Voxpop.tv , the pop culture game maker, has just received an undisclosed amount of angel funding. Voxpop's plethora of games are wrapped in a simple format that is easy to play and quickly ties in results from other players.
Social Network Technology and VoIP Provider YFonGlobal Raises Second Angel Round for a Total of $1.8 Million
YFonGlobal, a leading-edge provider of turnkey social network marketing technology, reports raising its second angel round of funding for a total of $1.8 million with an opportunity to raise $2.1 million from one angel investor's matching funds offer.
Web 2.0 Startups to watch
It's getting crowded on the Web 2.0 frontier, but there are still some startups that truly stand out. Business 2.0 Magazine identifies the ones most likely to strike gold in 2007.
Tech IPOs: They're back!
Why are champagne corks popping again in Silicon Valley? Tech startups are coming back to Wall Street - and Business 2.0 Magazine identifies six that are likely to cash in.
NBC, News Corp. gang up against YouTube
Media giants pooling resources to create an online video site that will take on Google's YouTube.
HP to Acquire Tabblo, Aims to Make Printing from Web Easier
HP today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tabblo Inc., a privately-held developer of web-based software located in Cambridge, Mass.
HP goes web 2.0, buys Tabblo
Now this is one Web 2.0 acquisition that makes sense! Hewlett-Packard has acquired Tabblo, Massachusetts-based company that makes it easier for consumers to upload and printing their photos from the web. Think of Tabblo as iPhoto rest of us - allowing folks to print their photos as calendars or albums, layered with all sorts of social web features.
HP Acquires Tabblo
HP announced the acquisition of Cambridge, Massachusetts based Photo printing site Tabblo this morning. The price is not being disclosed.
Limelight Files for $201M IPO
A tech IPO? That's a rare thing these days. That said, Limelight Networks isn't on the consumer side: it's a content delivery network that's powering the video craze, plus delivery of music, games, and software. An IPO has been on the cards for a while.
Oodle Raises $11 million
Classified search engine Oodle got a pile of cash today, $11 million from new investor JAFCO Ventures and the leaders of their previous $5 million round, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures.
Kongregate Announces Funding
Kongregate, a social network for gamers, launches their beta version today. We first mentioned them here as a more enticing alternative than GreatGamesExperiment , as they provide an ongoing community around playable Flash and Shockwave web games.
Social.com Goes Up for Sale
Could this be the ultimate social networking domain name in the history of the world ever? The owner, Guided Tour Software, wrote to tell Mashable that social.com went up for auction on Wednesday, with the bidding closing on April 4th.
Glu Mobile, Aruba giddy up for IPOs
The slow resurgence of the technology IPOs - Clearwire and BigBand Networks - has raised the hopes of many Silicon Valley companies that are hoping to use this window of opportunity and tap the public markets. Even those with shaky financial are looking at the market more optimistically.
Disney Buys Chinese Mobile Content Provider Enorbus; For Around $20 Million
Disney has bought Chinese mobile gaming company Enorbus , for around $20 million, MocoNews.net has learned. Financial backers in the company included Carlyle and Qualcomm Ventures.
CBS Acquires High School Sports Site
CBS announced the acquisition of MaxPreps, the largest high school sports site, earlier today.The acquisition price was not disclosed, but we're digging. We're hearing that the company was asking for $20+ million.
P2P Lender Zopa Gets $13M Funding - Expands into US
One of the more innovative web apps around has just gotten another big injection of funds, and a new CEO to boot. Zopa describes itself as a 'marketplace for Social Lending', where people lend and borrow money with each other - sidestepping the middleman, i.e. banks.
Flixster Hits 10 million Registered Users
Joe Greenstein, Flixster's CEO, told me (Techcrunch) by email that they now have ten million registered users and up to two million movie ratings completed daily (380+ million movie ratings to date).
YeboTV Gets $10M - For What?
Ohio-based YeboTV just scored $10 million in funding, proving that the money hasn't stopped flowing into video sites just yet. The money comes from the broadcaster Roberts Communications Network and Sunrise Operations, the investor arm of the horse betting company Winticket.com. The company was founded in October 2006.
Google Acquires Gapminder's Trendalyzer
An interesting Google buy today: they just snapped up the Trendalyzer software created by Sweden-based stats company Gapminder. What does it do? Well, it plots data in pretty animations like the one pictured below. Or as Gapminder themselves describe it, Trendalyzer 'unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations.' The Trendalyzer team will of course be joining Google: always good to get more stat heads aboard.
Let the passion continue! We're (Google) acquiring Adscape
Asteroids, Space Invaders, Centipede and Tetris-remember when you could only play these games at an arcade? I would line up behind at least 6 people for my chance at Asteroids. Time warp-now it's 2007. Games can be played anywhere and at anytime. In this mobile world, games have evolved to become a part of our lives. Unlike television, gamers can make games their own - customizing their experience in new ways-and we are helping them do that big time.
Adobe Launches Apollo, Alpha Version
Apollo is the code name for the much hyped Adobe cross-operating system. It allows developers to build RIA (Rich Internet Applications) for the desktop, using the development platform of their choice.
Popularity Might Not Be Enough
LET'S say you wanted to build an advertising-supported online media business that took in $50 million a year in revenue. How many users would you have to attract to get there?
Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire WebEx
Cisco (NasdaqGS: CSCO - News ) and WebEx today announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire WebEx. WebEx is a market leader in on-demand collaboration applications, and its network-based solution for delivering business-to-business collaboration extends Cisco's vision for Unified Communications, particularly within the Small to Medium Business (SMB) segment.
Cisco Buys WebEx for $3.2 Billion
News is just breaking that Cisco has agreed to aquire WebEx for $3.2 billion in cash. In 2006, WebEx generated nearly $50 million in profit on $380 million in revenue. They have $300 million or so in cash on hand, so the net deal value is $2.9 billion.
iVillage Launches a Social Network
We got a tip-off today that iVillage is rolling out a social network at connect.ivillage.com . It may or may not be relevant, but I remember back when NBC got very close to buying Tribe.net, there was talk that they wanted to integrate the social networking software into iVillage - it seems that idea has gone ahead using a different platform.
Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks
Microsoft Corp. today announced it will acquire Tellme Networks, Inc., a leading provider of voice services for everyday life, including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search. Microsoft and Tellme share a vision around the potential of speech as a way to enable access to information, locate other people and enhance business processes, any time and from any device. Combining Tellme's talented people and expertise in high-volume voice services with Microsoft's platform, resources and worldwide customer reach will inspire new and innovative solutions.
Viacom in $1 bln copyright suit vs Google, YouTube
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said on Tuesday it filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google Inc. and its Internet video sharing site YouTube over unauthorized use of its copyrighted entertainment.
Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google
They said that Google's acquisition of YouTube would be the act that saved it from the fate of Napster - lawsuit oblivion. And they may have been wrong, if today's $1 billion lawsuit is a sign of things to come.
Viacom Slaps YouTube with $1 Billion Lawsuit
In a statement announcing its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, and its corporate parent Google, Viacom lashed out at YouTube's business practices, saying it has "built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."
WikiSeek Launches Community Edited Search Engine
WikiSeek should not be confused with Wikia's upcoming search engine (although I did ). Both, however, are developing community-edited search engines, and both have received assistance from Wikipedia (Wikia, though, is co-founded by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales).
Eurekster Gets $5.5 Million Series B for Social Search
Eurekster, known for their Swicki community-driven search platform, has just announced $5.5 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Technology Venture Partners of Australia and Transcosmos Investments of Japan.
ElephantDrive Gets Funding From Intel
Los Angeles-based ElephantDrive, a company that uses Amazon's S3 storage service to provide online storage and backup services, has quietly raised a round of funding from Intel. The firm targets its online storage services for photos, music, videos, and other files.
Top Free Press Release Sites (for web 2.0 start-ups)
We have always been thinking that aside the well known web 2.0 influencers, web 2.0 start ups can also use free press release sites to get the word out for their innovations and technologies. Here we list some of the top and free press release distribution sites that are known to bring some good results on making your web site more visible on web.
Google Testing TV Ads in California
The WSJ is reporting (behind paywall) that Google is conducting a small scale test of television advertisements in the Northern California town of Concord (east of San Francsicso), and there are additional rumors that Google is close to signing a deal with Dish Network, a satellite television provider, to supply advertising to its television subscribers.
Become a partner in a huge web 2.0 site
The huge contextual platform LinkedWords, we are covering and using since its launch back in July 2006, went out this Saturday (March the 10th) with an ad in the The Economist looking for investors!
Is Clearwire worth $4 billion?
Today should be a red-letter day for all tech-IPO aspirants , for today Wall Street proved that a loss making company can go public, raise over half-a-billion dollars in public market funds, and then get a market capitalization of over $4 billion.
Bolt.com, Universal Settle for $10M
One final update to the Bolt.com saga, where Bolt (along with Grouper ), was sued by Universal for $150,000 per copyright infringement. The FT says that Universal agreed to drop the lawsuit for a $10 million settlement - eg. a third of the $30 million GoFish is reported to be paying for Bolt to get them out of the bind. UMG will now focus on its cases against Grouper and MySpace.
UUSee - the YouTube Killer - gets more funding - $23 million worth
UUSee, a self-called YouTube and Joost combo for the Chinese TV market, has received additional funding to the tune of $23.5 million dollars. The financing is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Highland Capital Partners, Steamboat Ventures. Other firms on board include Sequoia Capital China and SIG.
Federated Media Raising More Money, Looking to Sell
The company, which sells advertising for a number of blogs and other websites (including TechCrunch), had revenues of $4.5 million in 2006, its first year in operation. Projections for 2007 were $30 million in sales and 'several million dollars' in profit.
GeoSign Raises $160 Million For Content Acquisitions
In one of the largest private equity financings for an Internet company in recent history, Web publisher GeoSign, located outside of Toronto, has raised US$ 160 million from American Capital.
Grazr Gets $1.5 Million for Feeds and Widgets
The latest in the long line of funding announcements is Grazr, which allows users to create “custom feed-based applications”. The company has just completed Series A financing of $1.5M led by Boston-based angels Bruce Twickler and Louis Page.
Mojungle Acquired by Peak Performance Solutions
Mojungle, a MySpace widget that's been trying to sell itself for some time, has been acquired in its entirety by Ohio-based Peak Performance Solutions, the company told Mashable today.
Mojungle, finally sold
Mojungle, the media sharing site that had put itself up for sale on eBay, only to withdraw the listing because of zero-bids has been sold to Peak Performance Solutions of Columbus, Ohio.
Friendster, Google Make Exclusive Deal
Friendster will confirm the deal today: an exclusive search and ad deal with Google.
$100 Million Valuation For Geni
Seven week old Geni raised a $10 million second round of financing last week, led by Charles River Ventures (see our coverage of CRV here), with a post-money valuation of $100 million. George Zachary from CRV is joining the Geni board of directors.
Eons Raises Staggering $22 Million Round
Eons, which has received a lot of mainstream press for its easily understood idea (although on closer inspection it's not very MySpace-like at all), is set to announce a Series B round of $22 million today led by Charles River Ventures, with participation from newcomers Intel Capital and Humana Inc, plus existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital. The Series A round was $10 million from General Catalyst and Sequoia.
ClearSpring Gets $5.5M from AOL Founders
Red Herring is reporting that AOL founders Steve Case and Ted Leonsis have invested $5.5-million, as a second round investment, into widget syndication platform Clearspring.
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