• Fotolog Acquired by Hi Media, French Ad Network
• CNN.com Inks Multi-year Ad Deal with Google
• VoIP’s Jaxtr Closes $10MM Series A; Announces 1MM Users
• PE Firm Launches Online Marketing Solutions Rollup; Buys Two Agencies
• People Want Personal TV, Says IBM Consumer Survey
• Bluepulse Raises $6MM for Mobile Social Network
• Court Decides RAM is Stored Information in TorrentSpy Case
• JupiterResearch: Content Producers Need Intermediaries to Succeed
• Google Launches Facebook App.
• Fox Launches High School Video Sharing Site
• Google’s Plans for Peer-to-Peer Ads
Fotolog Acquired by Hi Media, French Ad Network
GIGA OM
New York-based Fotolog, a photo-sharing and blogging portal, has been acquired by Hi Media, a Paris-based interactive media company for roughly $90 million – a combination of cash and stock, according to well-placed sources. The announcement is likely to be made later today. Hi-Media is Europe’s third-ranked interactive advertising agency and also a provider of electronic micro-payment solutions in France. This deal makes them one of the largest pure-play Internet companies in Europe. Fotolog CEO John Borthwick explained to us that Hi Media management believes that it can better monetize the traffic on Fotolog, and it also add a publishing-element to their over all business. Fotolog was started in May 2002, and since then has grown rapidly – in Europe and Latin America – and is one of the Alexa 25 companies.
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CNN.com Inks Multi-year Ad Deal with Google
GOOGLE PRESS RELEASE
CNN.com and Google announced an agreement today that enlists Google’s AdSense(TM) advertising program to deliver site targeted advertising to CNN.com. Through this collaboration, the AdSense service places contextually relevant ads alongside CNN.com content, allowing both small and large advertisers to target CNN.com specifically and connect with high quality content and traffic. Under the terms of the deal, Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com.
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VoIP’s Jaxtr Closes $10MM Series A; Announces 1MM Users
TECHCRUNCH
Jaxtr has raised a $10 million Series A round led by August Capital with Mayfield Fund, Draper Richards, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Luxemburg-based Mangrove Capital participating. They’ve also doubled their registered user base over last month, totalling 1 million users. They plan on getting to a break even point on the investment and to total 20 million users by the end of next year. Jaxtr, like GrandCentral , uses VOIP as a utility to add features to your existing phone. Many other VOIP startups focus primarily on cost savings. Its service lets you anonymously post your phone number on the web and get cheap long distance calling rates. It works by connecting calls to your existing phone service through a Jaxtr number on VOIP. Calls are anonymous because they are made to a new Jaxtr number instead of your existing number. This lets you push all calls to voicemail and choose who can and can’t call through directly. Calls are cheaper because long distance calls are made over VOIP lines instead of standard phone networks.
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PE Firm Launches Online Marketing Solutions Rollup; Buys Two Agencies
NEW YORK TIMES
Stan Rapp, a longtime direct marketer, is embarking on his third (at least) career, joining forces with a private equity fund to start an agency that intends to use the new media to help forge closer, and more measurable, connections with consumers. Mr. Rapp is teaming with Halyard Capital, which is financed by sources that include Merrill Lynch Capital, to open the agency, named Engauge. Mr. Rapp, 82, will be the chairman. Engauge – spelled that way to underline its intent to provide marketers with tangible results from campaigns – plans to grow by acquiring agencies in fields like data analytics, behavioral targeting and direct marketing, then rolling them into a single agency. Engauge is starting with two acquisitions, each estimated to cost $15 million to $40 million: Direct Impact in Austin, Tex., with 100 employees and about $15 million in revenue, and Ten United, with 200 employees and about $25 million in revenue. Ten United is based in Columbus, Ohio, and also has offices in Orlando, Fla., and Pittsburgh.
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People Want Personal TV, Says IBM Consumer Survey
BROADBAND TV NEWS
A new IBM online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits shows audiences are more in control than ever and increasingly savvy about filtering marketing messages. The survey shows the TV and the Internet are on equal footing as entertainment sources. 66 percent reported viewing from 1 to 4 hours of TV per day, vs. 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage. Consumers are increasingly turning to online destinations like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, games, or mobile entertainment vs. traditional television. In the largest digital video recorder market, 24 percent of U.S. respondents reported owning a PVR in their home and watching at least 50 percent of television programming on replay. Surprisingly, 33 percent in the U.S. reported watching more television content than before the PVR. More than twice as many U.K. consumers surveyed use video on demand services than own a PVR, and less than a third of U.K. consumers have changed their overall TV consumption as a result of PVR ownership. In Australia, despite owning a DVR, most respondents prefer live television or replay less than 25 percent of their programming.
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Bluepulse Raises $6MM for Mobile Social Network
AMERICAN VENTURE MAGAZINE
Bluepulse, a pioneer in mobile social networking, today announced a series of major milestones in the company’s growth and development. Highlights include expanding into the North American market, with new headquarters in the former YouTube offices in Silicon Valley; raising $6 million in funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners; and announcing rapid global growth of its beta product. Within one application, Bluepulse enables users to communicate and meet new people through one-to-one and broadcast messaging, profiles, picture and video sharing, chat and a wide range of mobile widgets. To get Bluepulse, anybody in the world with a data plan can type “bluepulse.com” into their phone’s browser and download the application for free.
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Court Decides RAM is Stored Information in TorrentSpy Case
CNET
A federal judge issued a decision on Monday that would have required TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent search engine, to hand over information about its users had the company not ceased operating in the U.S. a day earlier. TorrentSpy, accused of encouraging movie piracy in a lawsuit filed by the film industry last year, was ordered in June to provide the studios with user information found in the company’s computer RAM. The site, which is often used by file sharers to find bootleg films, had long promised to protect the anonymity of visitors. TorrentSpy filed an appeal and argued that data in a computer’s RAM was too temporary to be considered “stored information,” and that it was impractical for companies to produce such material as part of a civil suit. According to court documents, the judge on Monday denied TorrentSpy’s appeal.
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JupiterResearch: Content Producers Need Intermediaries to Succeed
MEDIAPOST
In order to succeed in the long run, content producers must acknowledge the importance of blogs, portals, and aggregators in connecting with their audiences, according to a new JupiterResearch report, “Networked Media: Thriving In An Intermediated World.” The report points out, for example, that 57% of 18- to-24-year-old Internet users get their news from portals versus 21% from cable news sites–and online users now trust portals nearly as much as traditional news media. “To thrive on the Web, news sites must become more network-focused and aggregate content from other sources while distributing their own content through intermediaries,” said David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch. “By paying closer attention to the tendencies of the end user, these sites will be able to evolve and meet the needs of a wider online audience.”
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GOOGLE OPERATING SYSTEM
Google has launched an official Facebook application that lets you search the web and share the results with your friends. Built on Google’s AJAX Search API, the app lets you share your search results with friends. When users search Google they will have the option of clicking on a “share” tab that will allow results to be included in Facebook’s mini-feed. There is also a page showing popular results found by other Facebook users. Google currently uses your search history to personalise the application’s results.
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Fox Launches High School Video Sharing Site
MASHABLE
Fox is launching a new platform for video sharing and networking for high school students, called FoxHiLites.com. According to Fox, the new site “encourages students to act as their own local news team.” Users can create a profile and upload videos, watch other videos as well as Fox programs and comment on various topics ranging from high school sports to art. Fox says “local web teams” will view each video before it’s posted for security reasons. In order to watch videos, users will have to install Move Media player. Fox is launching local sites in 23 cities in the US, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington. Other high school aimed networking platforms include Hearst-Argyle’s Highschoolplaybook.com and Belo’s HSGametime.com.
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Google’s Plans for Peer-to-Peer Ads
ADVERTISING LAB
Google has filed a patent for what it calls user-distributed advertisements (UDA). A UDA system “facilitates insertion of manually selected ads into a document that is to be distributed (e.g., transmitted, published, and/or posted) such that the document is to be made available to other users. For example, manually selected ads can be inserted into an email to be sent to another user, a blog to be posted for viewing by other users, a message to be sent to another user, a message board entry to be posted for viewing by other users, a document published and made available to other users, etc.”
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Tags: BitTorrent, Blogging, DVR, Facebook, Fox, Google, Hearst, IBM, Local, MySpace, RIM, Series A, Social Networking, Turn, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Video, YouTube