In This Update:
• Yahoo Closer to Google Ad Outsourcing Deal
• MySpace Launches in India
• EBay Says Profit Jumped 22% in First Quarter
• Senator Proposes To Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files
• Alexa Overhauls Ranking System
• The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service
• Social Gaming Network Beefs Up App Acquisitions Amid Fundraising Rumors
• Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ Could Mean Windfall for Labels
• YouTube Expands Partner Program, $1 Million Distributed So Far
• Arqiva Plans International HD Distribution Platform
• Ofcom Suggests Using Sewer Systems for High-Speed Internet in UK
• Blinkx Partners With Revision3 For Video Distribution
• Intuit Opens Up QuickBase To Developers
• Truphone Raises $32.7 Million Series B for VoIP SIM Card
• Lonelygirl15 Production Company EQAL Gets $5 Million Funding
• Mobile Ad Firm mKhoj Raises $7.1 Million from KPCB and Others
• Collective Intellect Gets $6.6 Million Second Round for Social Media Analytics

Yahoo Closer to Google Ad Outsourcing Deal
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Yahoo Inc. moved closer to outsourcing its search advertising to Google Inc. after an initial test of the system yielded what the two firms deemed positive results, people familiar with the matter said. A partnership could give Yahoo some needed leverage as it tries to ward off an unwelcome $42 billion bid from Microsoft Corp. Some view the potential pact as mere gamesmanship, particularly in light of antitrust concerns that a Google-Yahoo linkup would likely raise. A search-ad deal could complicate Microsoft’s efforts but is unlikely to derail its plan.
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MySpace Launches in India
CENTERNETWORKS
MySpace is announcing the public launch of the MySpace India site today. The site is a dedicated community designed for Indian users of the social networking service. MySpace has partnered with Star TV, and Indian television network, to create an original network television program “Campus Star”, similar to American Idol here in the U.S. MySpace also recently launched a Korean site along with a Spanish U.S. site.
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EBay Says Profit Jumped 22% in First Quarter
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Benefiting from a weak dollar, online auction company EBay Inc. beat Wall Street’s expectations Wednesday, reporting a 22% hike in first-quarter profit and raising its outlook for the rest of the year. EBay reported net income of $460 million, or 34 cents a share, on revenue of $2.19 billion in the quarter that ended March 31. A year earlier, EBay earned $377 million, or 27 cents a share, on revenue of $1.77 billion. Excluding one-time items, EBay’s net income was $562 million, or 42 cents a share, compared with $460 million, or 33 cents, in the first quarter of last year. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected, on average, earnings of 39 cents a share on revenue of $2.08 billion. More than half of EBay’s business — including its core online auction, fixed-price and store listings, PayPal, Skype and classifieds — takes place overseas. Transactions in stronger foreign currencies mean more dollars for EBay.
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Senator Proposes To Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files
CNET
A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen. At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation” simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.
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Alexa Overhauls Ranking System
TECHCRUNCH
Alexa has announced a major overhaul of how it compiles traffic figures. The biggest change is Alexa’s decision to drop exclusive reliance on the Alexa toolbar for traffic data, with Alexa now aggregating data from “multiple sources” to compile its statistics and web rankings. As part of the move, historical data from Alexa is no longer available, with data now only going back 9 months.
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The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service
TORRENTFREAK
Popular BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want, without being afraid to get shut down by their blog host. The Pirate Bay is known for defending people’s right to freedom of speech on the Internet, and this is exactly what motivated them to start this new blogging service. Brokep, one of the co-founders of the site, said that the idea to start a blogging service came up when the weblog of one of his friends was taken down from Wordpress recently, for linking to copyrighted material.
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Social Gaming Network Beefs Up App Acquisitions Amid Fundraising Rumors
MASHABLE
Casual applications network, Social Gaming Network (SGN), is ramping up its portfolio by acquiring Facebook apps Esgut, Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block, for undisclosed sums. The network, which was spun off from web hosting firm Webs.com, is also rumoured to plan a funding round of roughly $10m, according to various online reports. Buying applications allows SGN to boost its traffic and user base. The network’s 70-plus apps are installed by a total of 48.5m Facebook users, behind Slide (97.7m) and RockYou (72.6m), but above rival Zynga (34.7m). However Zynga, which is also creating a network of casual apps by buying Facebook games, claims 1.9m daily active users, above SGN’s 1.1m.
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Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ Could Mean Windfall for Labels
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
A well-informed mobile industry executive who wishes to remain anonymous said that handset giant Nokia is paying record label Universal Music Group $35 for every phone that Nokia loads with access to Universal’s music library. Neither Nokia nor Universal would confirm the deal. Nokia plans to sell phones this year that offer consumers free access to Universal’s music library. Nokia calls it “Comes With Music.” One problem in mobile has been that carriers and media firms have struggled to work out mutually beneficial business models. A Nokia “Comes With” model could rectify that by giving content owners a guaranteed cut of phone sales. It also helps usher in the type of free-to-end-user deal that marks the future of mobile entertainment. Disclosure: Nokia is a client of Progress Partners.
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YouTube Expands Partner Program, $1 Million Distributed So Far
TECHCRUNCH
Youtube has announced that their Partner Program is expanding to include Japan, Austrailia, and Ireland. It was previously only available to users in Canada, the UK, and the United States. The program is designed to reward Youtube’s most prolific and popular video providers with portions of the ad revenues gained from their videos. Since December, when it was first made available to all users, the program has paid out more than $1 million to these partners.
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Arqiva Plans International HD Distribution Platform
BROADBAND TV NEWS
Arqiva has announced plans for an international high definition distribution platform. The occasional use service, launching this July, will adopt both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 technologies and DVB-S2 modulation through ten international teleports. Although many sports channels offer high definition coverage on domestic events, international feeds often remain in standard definition, however with recent coverage of US Open Golf, the Superbowl, and the upcoming Euro 2008 the picture is about to change. The platform will include up-down conversions between standard and high definition, frame rate, and format conversion.
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Ofcom Suggests Using Sewer Systems for High-Speed Internet in UK
BBC
ISPs could use existing sewer systems and other underground carriage mediums to ensure nationwide high-speed broadband in the UK, says Ofcom. Stepping into the escalating debate between ISPs and broadcasters over the increasing demand for bandwidth, the regulator says sewer networks and existing telecoms, water and energy infrastructure provide a possible means to carry high-speed broadband. Such methods are already in use in many European cities, including Paris, it says. The proposal is part of a consultation on next-generation network infrastructure, which will remain open until Jun 25. Ofcom hopes to find solutions that will allow the UK to operate a national network on par with nations such as South Korea, Japan and Germany.
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Blinkx Partners With Revision3 For Video Distribution
CENTERNETWORKS
Video search engine blinkx is announcing a formal partnership with Revision3 today. The partnership will bring Revision3’s shows, including Diggnation, to the video search powered by blinkx. Financial terms were not disclosed except to say that Revision3 will share in the revenue generated by the ads blinkx provides in the videos. Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3 said of the deal, “Our partnership with blinkx not only extends our reach, but their advanced search technology furthers our commitment to making our content on-demand and easily accessible.” blinkx notes that they have indexed 18 million hours of video.
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Intuit Opens Up QuickBase To Developers
TECHCRUNCH
Intuit wants in on the race to become the platform for enterprise apps in the cloud. It is opening up QuickBase to developers who want to build new hosted Web applications and businesses on top of it. QuickBase has been around for eight years and has amassed 250,000 users. At its core is an online database around which companies can create their own customized enterprise apps for things like project management or issue tracking. Now developers can join the QuickBase beta to develop their own enterprise apps on Intuit’s infrastructure. Intuit will host the apps, take care of the billing, and allow developers to charge whatever they want.
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Truphone Raises $32.7 Million Series B for VoIP SIM Card
WEBITPR
Mobile internet network operator Truphone has raised £16.5m ($32.7m) of Series B venture capital funding. The round was led by private investors, with all of Truphone’s existing backers – Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners – also participating. Truphone is a global, mobile operator that enables free and low-cost mobile phone calls via the internet, offering dramatic value to customers. Through the recent purchase of SIM4travel, Truphone has also completed its GSM core network, which will enable it to offer low-cost GSM calls worldwide via a travel SIM. With the additional funding available from the new round, Truphone plans to deliver on its vision of providing a killer combination of mobile cost and mobile convenience: a single, global SIM card that offers not only low call charges both domestically and abroad, but also internet calls at free and ultra-low prices.
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Lonelygirl15 Production Company EQAL Gets $5 Million Funding
PAIDCONTENT
EQAL, the new name of the production company behind the pioneering online video series Lonelygirl15, has received $5 million in funding from various investors to develop more shows beyond its first franchise and KateModern in UK. The round was led by Spark Capital, and includes some Silicon Valley heavyweights including Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen, and Georges Harik, a former Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executive. Also investing, Conrad Riggs, a Hollywood producer involved with TV shows such as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice”. EQAL was formerly known as LG15 Studios/Telegraph Ave, and is led by CEO Miles Beckett and President Greg Goodfried. The company says it is profitable through brand integration deals, something it wants to expand on with more shows. It would compete against the likes of many other such video studios, like NextNew Networks, 60Frames, and many others.
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Mobile Ad Firm mKhoj Raises $7.1 Million from KPCB and Other
TECHCRUNCH
Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures have ploughed $7.1 Million into mKhoj , a mobile advertising company based in Mumbai, India. It’s quite a “healthy” investment considering that its competitor mGinger received only $2 Million in funding last year. The mKhoj platform lets companies advertise on mobile phones by reaching out to targeted consumers. It also lets publishers monetize their traffic via contextual ads.mKhoj began in November 2006 as a local search service that helped mobile users search for attractive shopping deals in their vicinity. (khoj in Hindi means “search”). When this did not take off as expected, the founders quickly transitioned the company into a “Mobile Advertising Marketplace”.
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Collective Intellect Gets $6.6 Million Second Round for Social Media Analytics
DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE
Collective Intellect, a firm that provides social media analytics, announced on Wednesday that it has landed $6.6 million in its second round of funding, led by Grotech Capital Group. Crawley Hatfield Capital, and previous investors Appian Ventures and Croghan Investments also participated. Founded in 2005, Colorado-based Collective Intellect said it employs advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to track, filter, rank and analyze social media content for a wide array of businesses. The company will use the funds to expand its sales and marketing effort.
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Tags: Arqiva, BBC, BitTorrent, Blogging, Brand, Collective Intellect, EBay, Facebook, Google, Grotech Capital, Intel, Intuit, ISP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield 038 Byers, LATimes.com, Local, LTE, Microsoft, Music, MySpace, Nokia, P2P, Progress Partners, Revision3, Sherpalo Ventures, Skype, Social Networking, Truphone, U.S., Universal Music Group, Venture Capital, Video, Yahoo, YouTube