What you need to know - 03/17/11

Ronny Kerr · March 17, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1844

Facebook may have patented social search; study finds correlation between social media and stock

Look out rest-of-the-Internet, Facebook might now own social search, according to a patent first filed in October 2004 and awarded a month ago.

A new study finds a significant statistical correlation between the number of followers a company has on social media sites and how well their stock does.

Groupon is offering a deal for half off tickets to the new Matthew McConaughey film "The Lincoln Lawyer," which opens this Friday. Since Lionsgate is the merchant, this marks the first time a major motion picture company has partnered with Groupon to offer a deal.

Imagine K-12, a new incubator that provides lots of funding and mentoring for new startups in the education space, launched today.

Jawbone, creator of bluetooth headsets, wireless speakers and more, secured $49 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz.

A new Pew report has found that in 2010, a full 73% of Internet users turned to the Internet to get information about candidates and other voting issues. This translates to 54% of the voting-age population.

Today's featured entrepreneur is Evan Bailyn, a serial entrepreneur, author, and speaker who became a millionaire by the age of 25.

In direct competition with other Web services like Netflix and Redbox, just-launched Zediva offers users the ability to stream new films at a fraction of the cost.

Ronny Kerr

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Zediva

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on March 15, 2011

Zediva provides a new way for people to watch the latest popular movies online. Users have the ability to instantly watch movies as soon as they become available on DVD. With Zediva, movie aficionados can watch many movies as much as 90-180 days (or more) before they could with some other movie rental services … and at prices as much as 60-80 percent lower than many satellite and cable providers.

Zediva offers online DVD rentals via placeshifting. Instead of streaming a digital copy of the movie, Zediva customers rent a physical DVD, along with a DVD player (both located in Zediva's datacenters) for a fixed amount of time. They then control that DVD player remotely over the Internet — and watch the DVD instantly in the privacy of their homes. This model has been described as using the Internet as a “really long cable and a really long remote. Customers can also opt to receive a DVD rental by mail if they should so choose.

The rental DVD can be watched instantly on a wide range of Internet-connected devices, including TVs, laptops and smart phones with high-speed connections. Users have full access to DVD controls to play, pause, rewind and fast-forward as if the player was sitting in their own living room. Unlike many other online movie rental services, Zediva offers access to additional features like multiple languages, directors’ commentaries, subtitles and closed captioning.

Zediva is located in Sunnyvale, CA.