In This Update:
• Ticketmaster to Buy Majority of Front Line Management
• Jupitermedia to Sell Online Image Unit to Getty
• Japan, Korea Lead in Fiber-Optic Broadband
• LinkedIn Raises $22.7 Million from Goldman and Others
• MySpace Partners With IODA
• Sun Co-Founder Departs to Challenge Cisco
• Redstone Rejects Viacom, CBS Sale
• Moblyng Lets You Build Slideshows on iPhone
• Retail Game Card Sales May Hit $100 Million This Year
• ShopIt Raises $2.5 Million in Series B funding
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Ticketmaster to Buy Majority of Front Line Management
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Ticketmaster’s blockbuster agreement to acquire a controlling equity interest in Front Line Management Group Inc., is the latest nuke in the ongoing struggle for supremacy between Live Nation and what will be known as Ticketmaster Entertainment. Under the deal unveiled today, Ticketmaster will acquire the minority equity stake in management powerhouse Front Line, currently held by Warner Music Group, for approximately $123.0 million in cash and Irving Azoff, founder and CEO of Front Line, will become CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
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Jupitermedia to Sell Online Image Unit to Getty
REUTERS
Jupitermedia Corp said it will sell its online images business to Getty Images Inc for $96 million in cash, leaving it to focus exclusively on its online media division.The deal would allow it to pay off all of its bank debt, Jupitermedia said. But the company expects to take a non-cash loss of about $95 million when the deal closes. Chief Executive Alan Meckler and others, who collectively hold about 35.9 percent in Jupitermedia, have agreed to vote in favor of the deal. The transaction is not subject to a financing condition, the company said in a statement.
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Japan, Korea Lead in Fiber-Optic Broadband
REUTERS
Fiber-optic cable has become the biggest single broadband technology in Korea and Japan, which lead the world in the proportion of households connected to the Internet with super-fast links, OECD data showed on Thursday.The OECD’s latest broadband statistics showed that Korea had 12.2 fiber-optic connections per 100 inhabitants in June, compared with 10.5 connections via cable TV networks and 8.4 connections using DSL technology over copper telephone wires. The fiber penetration rate jumped from 10.4 percent in the previous OECD survey in December 2007.
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LinkedIn Raises $22.7 Million from Goldman and Others
DEALBOOK
LinkedIn has raised an additional $22.7 million to help insulate the steadily growing online business network from the economic storm and provide more financial flexibility.
The investment announced Thursday was made by one of LinkedIn’s long-time backers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and three newcomers. LinkedIn hasn’t drawn on any of that money yet, but still thought it was prudent to have more money in the bank as the economy slumps amid a credit crunch, Dan Nye, LinkedIn’s chief executive officer, told The Associated Press. He also said LinkedIn wanted the extra cash in case an enticing acquisition opportunity crops up.
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MySpace Partners With IODA
SOCALTECH
Los Angeles-based MySpace said today that independent music distributor IODA will provide its catalog to MySpace music. According to MySpace, the partnership with IODA–the Independent Online Distribution Alliance–will add over one million new songs to its platform. IODA is a digital distribution company which helps record labels negotiate licenses, encode data, and track royalties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Sun Co-Founder Departs to Challenge Cisco
VENTUREBEAT
Pounded by the stock markets after a poor showing in its recent earnings report, Sun Microsystems now has another thing to worry about: Co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, who most recently served as chief architect for its systems group, is leaving to help run a startup called Arista that will reportedly make networking equipment for a growing industry segment. Aside from helping to found Sun in 1982 with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla and Bill Joy (the latter two are now venture capitalists), Bechtolsheim is famous for being one of the very first investors in Google and also co-founded a company called Granite Systems in 1995, which later sold to Cisco for $220 million.
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Redstone Rejects Viacom, CBS Sale
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Media mogul Sumner Redstone said Wednesday there’s “not a chance” he’ll sell Viacom Inc. or CBS Corp. to resolve the debt issues facing his family holding company, National Amusements Inc. In an interview, Mr. Redstone ruled out selling any shares in either of the two companies he controls, even if negotiations with lenders about a debt restructuring turn sour. Mr. Redstone acknowledged there is “no guarantee” those negotiations will result in a deal, but he described them as “extremely constructive.”
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Moblyng Lets You Build Slideshows on iPhone
TECHCRUNCH
Moblyng , the company formerly known as FlipTrack that is focused on taking Flash-based slideshows to mobile platforms, has released an application on Apple’s App Store that allows users to create entertaining slidesshows from their iPhones. The free application includes a handful of skins, themes, and effects that can be placed on top of each photo. Creating a slideshow is very intuitive: after selecting which photos you’d like to use, you pick a border, an effect, and the slideshow’s speed.
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Retail Game Card Sales May Hit $100 Million This Year
CNET
The tale of retail game cards is a pretty amazing one. In a recent interview Rob Goldberg, founder and CEO of GMG Entertainment, a publisher of “digital currency cards” that you see on sale at Target, Safeway and a number of other big-box shops, shed some light on how the market came to be and where it’s going in the future. According to Goldberg, sales of the game cards will be worth $75 million to $100 million this year with an expected run to $500 million by 2010. Interestingly enough, Target was the retailer that figured it out first and convinced Apple to offer iTunes cards.
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ShopIt Raises $2.5 Million in Series B funding
WEBWARE
ShopIt, a social shopping service that works with popular social networks and e-commerce sites, announced today that it raised $2.5 million in Series B funding from Emerson Ventures and Propulsion Ventures. The company wants to raise a total of $7 million before it closes the round. ShopIt harnesses the popularity of social networks to entice sellers to use its service. After creating a store on ShopIt’s site, sellers can direct potential customers to their ShopIt profile to buy their goods or post their store’s widget anywhere on the Web. More importantly, ShopIt stores can be integrated into social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Hi5, along with sites like Craigslist and Amazon.
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