In This Update:
• CBS to Buy CNET Networks $1.8 Billion
• Comcast Acquires Social Network Pioneer Plaxo
• Vodafone Acquires Social-Networking Platform Company
• Ask.com Buys Dictionary.com Parent, Lexico
• Yahoo, WPP Partner On Ads Marketplace, Right Media Linkage
• Facebook Pulls Out of Google’s ‘Friend Connect’
• Windows to Run on One Laptop Per Child Computer
• Mobile WiMAX Technology Ready for Commercial Service
• Mobile DRM Vendor BeepScience Bought By Safenet
• Disney Builds Virtual Bridge for Interactive Games
• Study: BitTorrent Blocking Common on Comcast, Cox, StarHub
• U.S. Game Sales Jump 47 Percent in April on GTA4
• Website Optimization Firm Hubspot Raises $12 Million Second Round
• Stealth Search Startup Blekko Raises $3 Million Round

CBS to Buy CNET Networks $1.8 for Billion
NEW YORK TIMES
CBS said Thursday it would buy CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in cash, marking its biggest online acquisition since hiring Quincy Smith, a former media and technology investment banker, to lead its interactive unit in late 2006. The deal came as CNET, whose assets include a popular technology-news Web site, was trying to fend off a group of activist investors seeking to take control of its board of directors. A year and a half ago, Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, sought to reassure Wall Street that his efforts to expand CBS’s Web footprint would not include expensive acquisitions. CBS said Thursday it would pay $11.50 for each CNET share, a substantial 45 percent premium to where the stock closed on Wednesday.
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Comcast Acquires Social Network Pioneer Plaxo
REUTERS
Comcast Corp has agreed to acquire pioneering Web start-up Plaxo Inc, which first sought to turn address books into social networks and laid the foundation for Friendster and Facebook. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. However, a source close to the deal said Comcast, the largest U.S. cable TV operator and a leading U.S. broadband Internet supplier, is paying “around $175 million, plus or minus 5 percent.” Plaxo is famous in Silicon Valley lore for being early to realize the potential business opportunities sitting latent in the online address books of e-mail users — but only belatedly jumping on the social network craze that soon followed. Comcast plans to use Plaxo to give its consumers social network links across all Comcast-connected devices including TVs, digital video recorders and, eventually, wireless devices, thanks to a new partnership with Sprint, Clearwire and Google.
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Vodafone Acquires Social-Networking Platform Company ZYB
NEW YORK TIMES
Vodafone is acquiring ZYB, a Danish company that has developed a social networking and online management tool for backing-up and sharing contact and calendar information online. Vodafone announced the €31.5 million (US$48.7 million) deal Friday. ZYB’s social-networking platform is set apart from others because it works on mobile phones. Vodafone sees the opportunity to make money from, for example, mobile advertising using ZYB’s technology, according to a statement from the operator. ZYB is currently working on a new service called Phonebook, which will launch this quarter. Users will be able to see the location of their friends (if the friends will allow that), see if a contact is available for a call (including the time zone, so no embarrassing wake-up calls) and share their calendars.
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Ask.com Buys Dictionary.com Parent, Lexico
AP
Ask.com has bought a stable of Internet reference sites that includes Dictionary.com in its latest effort to distinguish itself from online search leader Google Inc. and other much larger rivals. Besides Dictionary.com, Ask is picking up Thesaurus.com and Reference.com in its acquisition of Lexico Publishing Group LLC. Terms of the deal, set to be announced Thursday, aren’t being disclosed. With the addition of the widely used reference tools, Ask hopes to make more money showing ads to people looking for answers to basic questions. “We want to ’super serve’ those people,” said Jim Safka, who runs Ask for its corporate parent, IAC/InterActiveCorp. More than 30 percent of the search requests entered on Ask are seeking reference material, Safka said.
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Yahoo, WPP Partner On Ads Marketplace, Right Media Linkage
REUTERS
Yahoo Inc has struck an advertising partnership deal with WPP Group that will let WPP buy ads on Yahoo’s online ad exchange, the companies said late on Thursday. Yahoo, which recently spurned a $47.5 billion unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp only to face a proxy battle led by activist investor Carl Icahn this week, said the deal would first involve WPP units GroupM and 24/7 Real Media. In a statement, the companies said that as part of the deal, WPP advertising agencies would, through its 24/7 Real Media arm, develop a proprietary advertising media trading platform that takes advantage of Yahoo’s Right Media exchange. WPP will also work with Yahoo to develop a WPP marketplace, giving WPP’s ad agencies wider access to potential advertising inventory, or places to advertise, across the Internet, as well as insight into how to buy ads cost-effectively for clients.
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Facebook Pulls Out of Google’s ‘Friend Connect’
INFORMATION WEEK
Facebook is withdrawing from Google’s ‘Friend Connect’ data portability project after saying the scheme violates its internal terms of service. Facebook signed up to ‘Friend Connect’ prior to its release but says the service breaches its terms of conditions as it passes on user data to third-party developers without the users’ consent. Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly says participation in the project was not formalized, arguing that Google did not fully brief the social network on how it would operate. The primary concern Facebook has with ‘Friend Connect’ is that its terms state that no Facebook ‘properties’ may be given to a third party without written consent.
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Windows to Run on One Laptop Per Child Computer
REUTERS
Microsoft Corp reached an agreement to make available its Windows operating system software for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO Laptop, the company said on Thursday. Microsoft was not part of the project started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte to develop an inexpensive laptop computer for elementary school children in developing countries. In recent months, the two sides have engaged in more serious talks and started testing the XO Laptop’s Sugar software package on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90 percent of the world’s computers. Microsoft said it plans to start trials of Windows on the low-cost laptop in key emerging markets as early as June. Customers will be able to choose to run the computer on either a Windows or a Linux operating system.
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Mobile WiMAX Technology Ready for Commercial Service
PHONESCOOP
Ending a lengthy trial period, today Sprint announced that it is officially ready to launch WiMax network services commercially in its test market of Baltimore-Washington, D.C. Sprint said that the mobile WiMax technology, which it is branding Xohm, has passed all the tests needed to assure certain quality measures regarding hand-offs and delays. The Baltimore-Washington, D.C. test market will be the first to launch commercially later this year. Sprint did not provide an exact date for the launch, nor information about access plan or hardware information, but it does have several key products in place, such as a laptop card, and WiMax-equipped Internet tablet.
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Mobile DRM Vendor BeepScience Bought By Safenet
DRM WATCH
Oslo-based DRM vendor Beep Science has been acquired by US security technology company SafeNet. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, was signed a couple of months ago (without publicity) and closed last week. Beep Science’s team will join SafeNet offices in Helsinki, Amsterdam, and other European locations. Beep Science’s client and server technology for OMA DRM will complement SafeNet’s existing DRM server software business, which it acquired from DMDSecure in 2005. SafeNet has made a string of acquisitions in recent years, including antipiracy service provider MediaSentry, also in 2005. The company started in the 1980s as an enterprise security technology vendor and has essentially become a roll-up.
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Disney Builds Virtual Bridge for Interactive Games
REUTERS
Disney is bridging the gap between gaming and virtual worlds. Disney Interactive Studios on Thursday formally launched DGamer, a free avatar-based community for U.S. buyers of games the company developed for the handheld Nintendo DS. Beginning with Friday’s release of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” in tandem with the theatrical release of the fantasy sequel, all Disney Interactive DS games will come with DGamer-added content like customizable avatars. DGamer members also will be able to use the WiFi connectivity of the DS to communicate with other members with either a DS or a PC. Although it features avatars and text chat, DGamer can’t really be described as a true virtual world such as Disney Online’s Club Penguin or Fairies.com — at least not yet.
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Study: BitTorrent Blocking Common on Comcast, Cox, StarHub
BETANEWS
Blocking of BitTorrent traffic is widespread among some ISPs in the US and Singapore, but not in Canada or any other country on the globe, says a new study released this week from German researchers. The study was conducted between March 18 and May 15 by the German-based Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, with assistance with more than 8,000 users worldwide. Together, they implemented a tool called Glasnost to test whether their BitTorrent traffic was being manipulated. Their results pinpointed Comcast and Cox as the leading culprits of torrent blocking in the US, though that may not come as a surprise to many of their customers. The survey was limited strictly to hosts whose BitTorrent transfers to the institute’s servers were blocked — or interrupted by RST packets generated by an ISP — as opposed to being throttled or rate-limited. For each country studied, the number of “distinct hosts” measured was compared against the number of hosts for which BitTorrent blocking was detected.
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U.S. Game Sales Jump 47 Percent in April on GTA4
REUTERS
U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 47 percent from a year earlier, as Take-Two Interactive Software Inc’s “Grand Theft Auto 4″ and Nintendo Co Ltd’s Wii console stole the show. The popularity of “Grand Theft Auto 4,” however, failed to boost sales of Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3, which both saw unit shipments fall sharply from the previous month. U.S. consumers bought 188,000 Xbox 360s and 187,000 PS3s in April, data from market research firm NPD showed on Thursday. That was down from 262,000 units and 257,000 units in March.
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Website Optimization Firm Hubspot Raises $12 Million Second Round
XCONOMY
Website optimization firm HubSpot has raised $12m in a Series B funding round led by Matrix Partners. The round follows a $5m funding round led by General Catalyst last Sep. HubSpot offers consultancy services and develops an internet marketing software that lets companies track and improve their websites’ visibility and efficiency. One of their tool, Website Grader, grades websites’ performance and list automated suggestions on how to improve its search engine optimization (SEO). Based in Massachusetts, HubSpot was founded in Jul 2006 by CEO Brian Halligan and chief software architect Dharmesh Shah. Both founders have also invested in the venture.
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Stealth Search Startup Blekko Raises $3 Million Round
TECHCRUNCH
Hot on the heels of Powerset’s partial launch earlier this week, stealth search engine Blekko (no logo, no website) raised a second round of financing. The company raised $3 million in equity at a $23 million post-money valuation. All previous investors participated, and new investors Marc Andreessen , SoftTech VC and Western Technology Investment also invested. They simultaneously closed a $1 million lease line with Western Technology Investment for server leases.
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