Tag | acquisition
Kodiak Capital Pumps $10 Million Into Online Adult Entertainment Company
Adult online entertainment and dating services company 7 Star Entertainment has signed an investment agreement with New-York based Kodiak Capital Group for a $10 million equity facility, the funding of which will be contingent upon them achieving certain conditions. The capital injection would be used for bolstering growth of the company’s flagship product AdultMatchClub.com and the build-out of its existing online portfolio, which includes sites like FriendMatchClub and . According to the announcement, the strategy to achieve this growth will be through international online marketing but also the acquisition of similar online properties. Update: as a commenter points out, looks like it concerns the same investment firm that plowed money into shady mobile payments company C$ cMoney . Hmmmm. CrunchBase Information Kodiak Capital Group Information provided by CrunchBase
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Kodiak Capital Pumps $10 Million Into Online Adult Entertainment Company
Google As Publisher…
Widgets Video content Video games Product comparison Travel eBooks They might prefer to use different labels (so as to minimize fear in the marketplace & slow down regulators), and they might claim that aggregate statistics control the investments & thus they are not really publishers, but they plan on skimming a big piece off of the top of many big markets. AdWords was just the start! Videos, maps & product search…look how Google self-deals in each while managing to call it a value added feature (or some such). If Google collects data, hosts data, sorts data, recommends personalized consumption habits , and then makes small investments in new content from proven past performers (and then give them a bit of stealth promotion on their network)…how is it possible for Google to lose money? (Outside of lawsuits)? How much of the online ecosystem can Google consume before publishers promote other views of the web? One way to fight this sort of strategy is Yahoo!’s sell or outsource everything but the logo strategy . It increases short term margins, but in the longrun it makes one that much more vulnerable. Google can always buy the partner of choice and then ride off the free promotion & validation that the acquisition gained from earlier partnerships. Sure adding more noise to a noisy market can bring in eyeballs, but fleeting ones. Death by a thousand compromises . The other is to work in markets too small for Google to be interested in. Or to define & create a new vertical, like Zynga did. Even with as shady as Zynga’s founder is , longterm that company is in a better position than Yahoo! is.
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Google As Publisher…
Chinese Online Game Developer The9 Invests In OpenFeint Maker Aurora Feint
The9 , a Chinese online game developer, has made an undisclosed minority equity investment in Aurora Feint , the company behind OpenFeint , a social gaming network for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad . The news comes a couple of months after The9 announced that it had acquired a majority interest in US-based Red 5 Studios for a total of approx. $20 million . Aurora Feint had previously raised a multimillion-dollar round of funding from DeNA , the largest Japanese operator of mobile social networks and virtual goods platforms. Burlingame, CA-based Aurora Feint develops mobile games and operates OpenFeint, a mobile social platform and application for smartphones that includes a set of online game services such as leaderboards and achievements running in a cloud-based Web environment. OpenFeint’s developer SDK is a toolkit that can be integrated into any iPhone based game. OpenFeint also recently announced OpenFeint X , a virtual goods management system that enables developers to build free-to-play social games for mobile phones. The company claims over 28 million active users and 2,200 games, which it says makes OpenFeint the standard for social gaming on Apple devices. The9 Chairman and CEO commented on the acquisition, “We are confident of the prospect for this mobile platform and believe it will play an important role in the future development of global mobile internet. The investment in Aurora Feint is an important step of The9′s establishment of a mobile gaming platform and is also an integral part of our global strategy.” CrunchBase Information Aurora Feint The9 Information provided by CrunchBase
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Chinese Online Game Developer The9 Invests In OpenFeint Maker Aurora Feint
EMC Acquires Data Warehousing And Analytics Company Greenplum
Enterprise software giant EMC has acquired data warehousing company Greenplum Software . Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the acquisition is an all-cash transaction. Greenplum, which has raised $61 million in funding, develops database software for business intelligence and data warehousing applications. Greenplum has a number of high profile investors, including Sun Microsystems and SAP Ventures. The company’s client base includes Skype, Equifax, T-Mobile and Fox Interactive Media Greenplum will become the foundation for a new data computing product division within EMC’s Information Infrastructure business.
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EMC Acquires Data Warehousing And Analytics Company Greenplum
TweetUp Buys Android Twitter Client Twidroid And News Aggregator Popurls
Twitter search and advertising platform operator TweetUp this morning announced that it had acquired Twidroid , creator of the popular Twitter client for Android phones. The new owner will rename the app Twidroyd to avoid legal trouble with Lucas Films, trademark owner of the term “droid”. TweetUp is also buying news aggregator service popurls , which has long been placing the most popular items from the NY Times, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, YouTube, Flickr and other news and social media sites on one handy page (it’s also one of my personal favorites on the Web). Combined, Idealab -owned TweetUp hopes Twidroid and popurls will provide it with a distribution network on which to test and refine its platform for finding the world’s best tweeters. Terms of the acquisition(s) were not disclosed. Twidroid and popurls weren’t incorporated as such – they were operated by a startup called tomatic , founded by Austrian serial entrepreneur Thomas Marban . The acquisition represents a score for Ralph Zimmerman , and for Marban it’s a coup in a series of three – he has now sold all 3 of his most recent ventures, the longest one he held on to being software company Celum, which was acquired back in 2007 after he co-founded it in 1998. Here’s a complementary quote from TweetUp CEO (and original Overture founder) Bill Gross : “Acquiring Twidroyd provides TweetUp with a number of strategic advantages. Twidroyd is widely considered the best Twitter client for Android phones and it leads in market share, so its growing base of users will be a valuable source of well-informed feedback on TweetUp search on mobile devices. In addition, the popurls website, which attracts users looking for a convenient guide to the most popular sites, news, videos and blogs on the Internet, will be a natural spot to display TweetUp search results and gain user feedback. This combination should enable us to more rapidly refine our offerings, generating better user experiences for distribution partners and for users searching for the world’s best tweeters regardless of their choice of devices.” Coinciding with the acquisition announcement, Twidroid Twidroyd has released version 3.4.0 of the Android app, which incorporates a good number of new features . In April, TweetUp opened registration for its bidded marketplace for real-time search , and in May the company launched its search capabilities on a number of sites at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, including here at TechCrunch, Topix.com, and Businessinsider.com. TweetUp’s search algorithms and marketplace aim to address the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to algorithms that combine a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters will soon be able to bid on keywords in a marketplace very similar to what now occurs at search engines. It’ll be interesting to see if Gross can make even half the impact he did with GoTo / Overture ( acquired by Yahoo 7 years ago almost to the day), which pretty much invented the sponsored search model. TweetUp has revenue-sharing agreements in place or in the pipeline with a number of partners, including Twitter clients TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Twidroyd but also players like Conduit, Netvibes, TwitterFeed and Klout. Most if not all will be online over the next few weeks. TweetUp claims the grand total reach of the clients and web sites will bring its search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than 100 million impressions per month. Which means it’s off to a pretty good start (but still faces a long road ahead). (Hat tip to Justin Hubbard for the heads up) CrunchBase Information TweetUp twidroid popurls Thomas Marban Information provided by CrunchBase
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TweetUp Buys Android Twitter Client Twidroid And News Aggregator Popurls
LVMH Buys E-commerce Site Sack’s To Expand Sephora Into Brazil
Luxury products giant LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) has reached an agreement to acquire a 70%, controlling stake in Sack’s , a Brazilian online retailer of fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. With the acquisition, LVMH aims to expand its Sephora subsidiary into the Brazilian perfumes and cosmetics market, reportedly one of the largest and fastest-growing beauty markets worldwide. Initially online only, but also in physical stores over time, according to the press release . Founded in 2000, Sack’s carries over 270 brands, which it is able to sell to a client base that spans more than 830,000 customers. Sack’s is one of the top-three most frequently accessed pure-play e-commerce sites in Brazil, with 4 million unique visitors each month. Carlos André Montenegro, co-founder and CEO of Sack’s, and his partners, Albatroz Participações and Marcelo Franco, will continue to hold a 30% stake in Sack’s. The current management team, led by Mr. Montenegro, will remain in place and Sack’s will continue to be based in Rio de Janeiro. CrunchBase Information Sephora USA Information provided by CrunchBase
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LVMH Buys E-commerce Site Sack’s To Expand Sephora Into Brazil
comScore Acquires Products Division Of Mobile Network Data Company Nexius For $24 Million
Analytics giant comScore has just acquired the products division of Nexius, a mobile analytics and data networking compant. Nexius’ products provide analytics that mobile operators can use understand consumer behavior, and to build better networks and experiences. The technologies essentially allow mobile operators to make sense of the enormous amount of data available. comScore tells us they paid $24 million for the products division of Nexius, with $18.6 million paid in cash. comScore has high hopes for the acquisition, stating the the release that it anticipates that the acquisition will add $4 million to the company’s 2010 revenue. That’s actually a pretty significant amount for the company; for the entire (fiscal) year 2009, comScore reported revenues of $127.7 million, up from $117.4 million the year before, an 8.8% increase. comScore, which just went free for startups, has been growing both in revenue and acquisitions. The company acquired Latin American Web Measurement Company Certifica and advertising research agency ARSGroup earlier this year. CrunchBase Information comScore Information provided by CrunchBase
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comScore Acquires Products Division Of Mobile Network Data Company Nexius For $24 Million
HP Completes $1.2 Billion Acquisition Of Palm, Plans webOS Slate PCs And Netbooks
As widely expected following the approval by Palm shareholders , the acquisition of the company by Hewlett-Packard for roughly $1.2 billion has today been announced closed . The price, as previously announced, is $5.70 per share of Palm common stock, paid in cash. Once again, HP repeats that it intends to double down on the innovative webOS platform and Palm’s line of smartphone. The company neatly points out that it has also just bought itself a bag of intellectual property. Under Jon Rubinstein , former Palm chairman and CEO, the Palm global business unit will report to Todd Bradley, EVP of the Personal Systems Group at HP. The Palm division will be responsible for, and I quote from the press release, webOS software development and webOS based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks . I, for one, look very much forward to what comes out of the merger. CrunchBase Information Hewlett-Packard Palm Information provided by CrunchBase
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HP Completes $1.2 Billion Acquisition Of Palm, Plans webOS Slate PCs And Netbooks
Local.com Buys Domain Advertising Company OCTANE360 For Up To $11M
Local business directory and search engine Local.com this morning announced the acquisition of the assets of OCTANE360 , a technology startup based out of Los Angeles that provides domain-based local advertising solutions to small businesses, domain portfolio owners, agencies and channel partners. Under the terms of the agreement, Local.com is paying $5 million in cash and stock with an earnout of up to $5.9 million if certain performance criteria are met in the two-year period following the closing. OCTANE360 will become a wholly-owned division of Local.com Corporation . Founded in 2008, OCTANE360 offers a number of services to its client base, which consists mostly of small businesses and agencies, on a direct, wholesale or private label basis. The services it offers include targeting and registration of geo-category based local website domains ( examples ), website creation, hosting and management, an ad exchange system to manage the selection and deployment of ad inventory and a content marketplace for the management of geo-category content. Following the acquisition, OCTANE360 will be managed within Local.com’s Sales & Ad Services business unit, and its products and services will be utilized by the company’s Owned & Operated and Network business units. OCTANE360 CEO Adam Rioux will become Local.com’s vice president, leading the newly added division. Finally, Local.com also announced the closing of a $30 million revolving credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank . The facility, secured by all of the company’s assets, is expected to be used primarily for general working capital and to fund more ‘strategic growth initiatives’. CrunchBase Information Local.com Information provided by CrunchBase
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Local.com Buys Domain Advertising Company OCTANE360 For Up To $11M
Alcatel-Lucent Acquires Web API Repository ProgrammableWeb
ProgrammableWeb , a well-known repository for Web APIs, has been acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in a surprise move. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, but according to the press release , ProgrammableWeb will continue to operate as a separate entity and the site’s founder John Musser will be making the move to Alcatel-Lucent. The repository , which was launched back in 2005 and now contains some 2,042 APIs (we covered when it hit 1,000 back in November 2008), will be maintained by its new owner. Alcatel-Lucent says it bought ProgrammableWeb to help foster an ecosystem of service providers, enterprises, and developers to drive the creation of applications at present and in the ‘new world of broadband mobile’ through LTE (Long Term Evolution). The company adds that it will provide support and resources to promote the growth of the API, mashup and developer ecosystem, and facilitate service providers’ participation within it. The acquisition also gives Alcatel-Lucent access to general API usage patterns, allowing it to build API Bundles for its own Open API Service . ProgrammableWeb’s API monitoring services, API trial services, and automated API updates will be integrated into Alcatel-Lucent’s Developer Platform . CrunchBase Information Alcatel-Lucent Information provided by CrunchBase
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Alcatel-Lucent Acquires Web API Repository ProgrammableWeb
