Yahoo is buying all the things! Maybe even...

Rumors abound, but can Yahoo afford the hefty price tag?

by Faith Merino - May 17, 2013
Financial trends and news

The Bay Area: A hub of emerging telephony?

by Larry Lisser, November 12, 2009 | Comments

As communications move to the cloud and platforms becomes open, a new community emerges.

I've been wondering. The Bay Area is well documented as the engine of innovation for web services, social networking and more. Some might argue even too well documented. But can the same be said about it for the telephony arena?As someone who used to live up North, Canada once felt like the world's engine for telecom development. Companies like Nortel, ...

Personera launches Facebook-created calendars

by Ronny Kerr, November 12, 2009 | Comments

Facebook Connect-powered site seeks to excite users about actual, physical calendars

"With technology all around us, we still love the feeling of staring at a picture on the wall, scribbling important notes in a planner, and flipping through a magazine on the couch."So claims Personera, a company that launched a service Wednesday that enables any user, through Facebook Connect, to create fully customizable and totally personal calendars.After logging in their Facebook ...

Google testing skippable pre-roll YouTube ads

by Ronny Kerr, November 11, 2009 | Comments

Internet giant makes a hope and a prayer for serious revenue from limited video advertising

Exactly three years ago from this November 13, Google finalized its $1.65 billion (in Google stock) acquisition of YouTube, now the most popular video site in the world. Unfortunately for its tech giant parent, however, YouTube has yet to bring in the cosmic revenue stream that everyone claims it should.In part of a series of more aggressive efforts to make ...

Kyte on its way to Android and Nokia

by Chris Caceres, November 11, 2009 | Comments

Online video provider making a smart move in the mobile video space

With mobile video consumption on the rise, Kyte is making some moves to keep everyone happy.The online and mobile video platform, announced Wednesday it will be extending its reach to the Android and Nokia phones. It's a good move for the company, given that Google just launched its mobile OS on the Droid, which is being reviewed as an excellent ...

Wider Wake launches angel investor network

by Ronny Kerr, November 11, 2009 | Comments

New angel network run by Paul Olliver and Jeanne Gammon aims to aggregate VC wisdom

Wider Wake Networks, Inc. announced Wednesday morning the launch of a forum for entrepreneurs and investors alike to share knowledge, gain experience, and make connections with each other.The founder and CEO of Wider Wake, Paul Olliver (previously a senior digital media executive at Klipmart, Yahoo! and DoubleClick), established the new network as a place for those involved in digital media ...

Social gaming, post-Playfish acquisition

by Ronny Kerr, November 10, 2009 | Comments

Chris Cunningham of appssavvy speaks on the future of the social gaming business

After the tech world nearly imploded Monday morning with news that EA had acquired social gaming startup Playfish for no less than $275 million in cash, we decided to speak with Chris Cunningham, founder and CEO of appssavvy, about the future of this hugely blooming social gaming business.Because appssavvy works with Zynga and Playdom, as well as Playfish, we asked ...

Startup ecosystems take time

by Fred Wilson, November 10, 2009 | Comments

Think about 'decades' when you think about the development of new startup hotbeds

Saul Klein, co-founder of Seedcamp and one of the top VCs in europe, has a long and thoughtful post up on the evolution of Seedcamp. In it he says:In my mind, helping to bring some cohesion to our region's distributed network of talent, capital and is a 15-20 year project. ...... Getting to the right point takes time, and the ...

AppNexus secures $5 million

by Chris Caceres, November 10, 2009 | Comments

Real-time online advertising platform looking to expand business and hire top talent

AppNexus, a provider of a platform for buying real-time online advertising, announced it secured $5 million in funding from Kodiak Venture Partners with particpation from other current investors Venrock and First Round Capital. The New York-based startup said it provides buyers of online ads with a proprietary gateway to leading ad exchanges and ad inventory aggregators. So it isn't exactly ...

Twitter links up with LinkedIn

by Ronny Kerr, November 10, 2009 | Comments

Just the beginning of a guaranteed long relationship between microblogging and business data

After a nonstop barrage of updates last week from the microblogging startup, Twitter might have been expected to take this week off before making any new announcements.Not so, as Monday night it was revealed that LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site, has teamed up with Twitter to make it easier for users of both sites to synchronize posts to and ...

Google Buys AdMob for $750M

by Matt Bowman, November 9, 2009 | Comments

Grab gives Google advertising foothold on Apple's iPhone, monetization tool for Android.

Google Admob. Google announced today it would acquire mobile display ad serving platform Admob for $750M in stock. The 3-year-old San Mateo-based startup serves ads on mobile websites and applications. Google hopes the acquisition will help them monetize the mobile web, as it penetrates the market with Android-based phones. One wonders if this could mark the beginning of a mobile ...

EA acquires Playfish for at least $275M

by Ronny Kerr, November 9, 2009 | Comments (1)

Game developer for social sites like Facebook attracts big money from big game publisher

Electronic Arts, one of the world's largest third-party game publishers, announced today the acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for at least $275 million in cash and $25 million in equity retention arrangements. Additionally, if Playfish reaches certain performance milestones by the end of 2011, Playfish's former owners could nab up to $100 million in cash.While EA has been a ...

Rupert Murdoch to block Google

by Mark Cuban, November 9, 2009 | Comments (1)

	Equals smart equals Twitter has changed it all Rupert Murdoch has said that his Newscorp sites are going to block Google indexes. Of course, all the netizens freak out when this happens. Which I love.I love to tweak all the Internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world ...
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